Obama administration directed foreign allies to target Trump, associates: report

A new report released on Tuesday has revealed that under the Obama administration, the United States Intelligence Community (IC) mobilized foreign agencies long before the summer of 2016 to target Trump, before the FBI began its "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into debunked Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

In a joint report by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation revealed that the US IC asked the "Five Eyes," which constitutes the nations of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to surveil and share intelligence gathered on Trump associates with US agencies.

Former President Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan reportedly identified 26 Trump associates for the nations to target, and a source confirmed that the IC "identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation."

Sources said that details on the FBI’s investigation of Trump and raw intelligence from the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign were contained in a 10-inch binder, which Trump ordered to be declassified at the end of his term.

It was previously reported that the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was considered the "primary whistleblower" in the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.

Sources instead say that the US IC asked its foreign allies to target these 26 members of Trump’s team.

"They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016," a source close to the investigation told Public and Racket. "They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. The MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up."

A source added that the IC considered the 26 people marked to "bump," or manipulate through confidential human sources (CHSs), to be easy targets because of inexperience.

US law prohibits this type of intelligence gathering unless a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant is obtained.

GCHQ denied the reporting, with a spokesperson stating, "The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wire tapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

The report noted though that "in our email presenting the claims to GCHQ, we did not refer to 'wiretapping' but rather to its UK spy agency’s broader alleged involvement in the scheme."

The FBI stated, "The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that [Justice Department] Special Counsel [John] Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented."

One of those Trump associates who was targeted was Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, for whom the FBI admitted that it should not have sought FISA warrant to wiretap.

A source said IC officials targeted Page because they viewed him as inexperienced.

"You look at some of the people who were there," the person said. "They weren’t sophisticated or experienced at disinformation or at [dealing with] IC people planting ideas or befriending you."

The first of the targets by the IC appeared to be former Defense Intelligence Agency head Michael Flynn, who would go on to be Trump’s National Security Advisor.

Stefan Halper, a Cambridge academic and a "confidential human source," approached Flynn in March of 2016. He approached at least four Trump targets, and was paid $411,575.

"The Stefan Halper story is ridiculous," a source said. "He was the consultant to write papers that really weren’t papers and paid inflated sums like $400,000… He was conducting bumps and intel contacts."

Trump aide George Papadopoulos was approached by Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, which House Democrats on the Intelligence Committee "Kremlin-linked." A source said that Mifsud was instead "a professor who really worked for MI6."

HPSCI investigators attempted to get their report declassified before Trump left office, but the CIA was reportedly not cooperative, and "rebuffed" them "at every turn," a source told Public and Racket.

The investigators had "created a binder that blew up the assessment but couldn’t get it out because the CIA controlled it," said a source. 

The investigation had to be done "at their spaces," and the CIA "monitored" the investigators. A "minder" with the CIA was present while investigators worked on the report.