According to a source, the US Intelligence Community (CIA) requested that the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance monitor 26 Donald Trump associates in the run-up to the 2016 election, which sparked claims that the former president’s campaign colluded with Russia.
According to a report published Monday on Michael Shellenberger’s Public Substack, former Obama CIA Director John Brennan identified and presented targets to the US’s intelligence-sharing partners in the so-called “Five Eyes” agencies – the intelligence-gathering organisations in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, all independent investigative journalists, authored the report.
Alex Gutentag is an award-winning writer and Tablet columnist from California. Michael D. Shellenberger is an American author and journalist specialising in free speech and censorship, whereas Matthew Colin Taibbi is an award-winning American novelist and journalist.
They cite several anonymous sources, including those close to Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The US intelligence community had “identified” the 26 Trump associates “as people to ‘bump,’ make contact with, or manipulate,” according to one source.
In spy jargon, “bumping” refers to creating a pretext to meet a target of interest to create a relationship that could lead to intelligence. “They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation,” a source familiar with the matter said.
According to the article, Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters intelligence organisation, or GCHQ, began contacting Trump associates at the request of the CIA in March 2016.
“They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” an insider told the newspaper. “They were dispatching personnel around the UK, Australia, and Italy, including the Mossad in Italy.
The MI6 was working at an intelligence school that they had established.
A GCHQ spokeswoman told the newspaper that reports that it was “asked to conduct ‘wire tapping’ against the then-president-elect are nonsense.”
According to the outlet, intelligence relating to the alleged surveillance effort is housed in a “10-inch binder,” which former President Trump, 77, ordered to be declassified at the end of his presidency and may contain evidence that “multiple US intelligence officials broke laws against spying and election interference.” The whereabouts of the claimed thick binder are unknown.
US law expressly prohibits warrantless surveillance of US citizens.
Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer, was sentenced to probation in 2021 after admitting that he faked an e-mail to renew a wiretap against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Intelligence sources accused Page of being targeted by Russian operatives, leading to his wiretap. The wiretap, approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was renewed numerous times after it was first authorised.
Following a four-year assessment, Special Counsel John Durham determined in March that the FBI investigation into Trump’s alleged cooperation with Russia was “seriously flawed” and lacked proof.
In response, the FBI stated that it had “implemented dozens of corrective actions” since the inappropriate Trump probe and that “the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented” if the reforms had been in place in 2016.
Taibbi and Shellenberger were involved in the publication of the Twitter Files exposé in 2022, which documented how the social media giant’s former management team attempted to censor unpopular voices and hide news items like The New York Post’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress about their startling revelations from the “Twitter Files,” which are internal Twitter papers that expose censorship and coordination with government agencies.
Their testimony before the House Judiciary Committee shed light on social media platforms’ vast, unrestrained power to censor online expression. But one issue in particular concerned the extent to which current and former government operatives wielded power within the corporation.
The Twitter Files, a collection of internal documents from Twitter (now known as X), emerged in late 2022. They showed the platform’s content management policies, which included suppressing specific opinions and accounts.
Shellenberger highlighted Twitter employees collaborating with other groups to “pre-bunk” the Hunter Biden laptop claim by lobbying media and platforms not to report it despite no evidence that it was false.
The Twitter files also revealed that the social media firm has hired some former FBI agents to work in Twitter’s upper echelons. They included Jim Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel, and the former Deputy Director of the FBI.
“There were so many FBI people at Twitter that they had their own internal group and their own little crib sheet to describe the difference between the terms that they use at the FBI versus at Twitter,” Shellenberger added.
Former CIA workers, who had a large presence in the corporation, reportedly formed their internal organisation.
Source: The New York Post
