One of the ingredients in the unraveling and exposing the Obama administration's surveillance scheme was Evelyn Farkas. A few weeks ago she told MSNBC that she was trying to pressure her old colleagues in the Obama administration -- even Barack Obama himself -- to disclose what they knew (about Trump surveillance?) to each other.
Farkas left the administration in 2015. She served as deputy assistant secretary of defense. She spoke to MSNBC on March 2, 2017.
“I was urging my former colleagues, and frankly speaking, the people on the Hill … ‘get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration,’ because I had a fear that, somehow, that information would disappear with the senior people who left,” she said.
“That’s why you have the leaking, because people were worried,” she added.
Susan Rice, under pressure because it looks like she was the person who removed the classified mask and leaked to the media, is trying to deny everything, but when partnered with Farkas' remarks, and the evidence that is emerging regarding Rice, the whole thing is becoming “devastating” for the Democrats.
Interestingly enough, the MSNBC comments were hardly the only time Farkas encouraged the distribution of intelligence on Trump officials.
In a Politico column in December, Farkas voiced concern that the American public doesn’t have access to the information the intel community has on connections between Russia and Trump.
“The information needs to be made public,” she wrote. “If the answers yield further evidence that the president-elect is indebted to the Russian government or individuals with Kremlin ties, the intelligence community and policy officials should also begin disclosing what they know about whether Trump's associates have been in contact with Russian officials, and what they've been discussing.”
She went on to warn that officials with answers to those questions and who could declassify that intel were to leave office when Trump took office.
Just days before Trump took office, Farkas went a step further in a piece for Newsweek and called for then-President Barack Obama to step in.
“We need President Obama to share with the public the information the FBI has to date on this issue, and we need President-elect Trump to explain the full extent of his ties with the Kremlin and influential Russians,” she wrote.
Much more recently Farkas spoke on BBC about the existence of evidence showing Russian interference in the presidential campaign. “Some of that, the proof is in very tightly held, classified channels,” she said. “… And also the question of whether Trump’s people were involved probably also would show up in those channels.”
Now, Farkas has realized she may have said too much, and says that her MSNBC comments were taken out of context.
“At the end of the interview I did start a new thought ‘that’s why they leaked,’ but got cut off. I would have explained that leaking is illegal and I would never condone it, but it seems that the people who were leaking to the New York Times might have also been concerned that the legislative branch was being left in the dark,” she told The American Spectator.
As if the reasons behind doing something illegally makes it no longer illegal.
Too late. Damage done. The totality of Farkas' articles and interviews sends a clear message: high-level Obama officials, based on surveillance on the Trump team the deny every being a part of, believed they had potentially damaging information on Trump-Russia ties...but they got that alleged information through unlawful surveillance on Trump, and his people.
Oh, and the unmasking of the Trump team names was very illegal as well.
Oh, and the unmasking of the Trump team names was very illegal as well.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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