House Oversight Committee Calls for Investigation into Obama

Barack Obama set the record for the greatest number of regulations enacted during one presidency – but when it came to government surveillance, he was more than happy to deregulate away the hurdles that agencies would need to spy and share surveillance with one another.

In fact, one of the last things Obama did while in office was sign off on new rules relaxing NSA rules that hampered their ability to share surveillance intelligence. In effect, the NSA can now share a whole trove of their raw data with other agencies. Previously, if they were to spy on someone, and captured a conversation their target had with a friend, the name of the friend would have to be redacted to protect his or her identity

This opens up a backdoor, where the government can spy on someone by proxy. Suppose someone wanted to spy on Trump for instance, but it would be far too obvious to file a warrant with Trump’s name on it for surveillance. Instead, one could try to get a warrant to spy on an associate of Trump that has a high chance of communicating with Trump, thus picking up him in the process.

This rule change officially happened on January 12, 2017, just days before Trump was elected, and while Obama was officially in the “lame duck” stage of his presidency. While every other president was confined to granting pardons in that late stage, Obama was changing rules for surveillance. Why?

Could it have been that the NSA has been acting recklessly throughout Obama’s presidency, in complete disregard for the rules on the books at the time, and Obama needed to simply change the rules after the fact to justify their actions?

Even odder, less than 30 minutes after Trump was sworn in, former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent an email to herself insisting that Obama wanted to make sure the probe into Russia’s election meddling was done “by the book.” Am I crazy – or does that look like she’s trying to create an alibi for something?

Those are two oddities that raise red flags – especially in light of comments from the NSA Inspector General in October 2016 regarding FISA (surveillance request) abuses, who criticized the “institutional lack of candor” on NSA’s part and emphasized that “this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

What are we to make of these red flags? Congress is about to find out.

According to the Daily Wire,

The House Oversight Committee members called for a new special counsel to be appointed to investigate crimes involving bias and FISA abuse at the Obama Department of Justice.

Making the official request to the DOJ were Republican Reps. Trey Gowdy (SC) and Bob Goodlatte (VA), the chairmen of the oversight and judiciary committees respectively.

https://twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/971153766736162816

“Matters have arisen — both recently and otherwise — which necessitate the appointment of a Special Counsel. We do not make this observation and attendant lightly,” the letter addressed to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein begins.

“We believe that, in the case of certain decisions made and not made by the Department of Justice and FBI in 2016 and 2017, both an actual conflict of interest exists and separately, but equally significant, the public interest requires the appointment of a special counsel,” the letter continues.

The letter cites the anti-Trump dossier, paid for by the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, as being strong evidence of bias at the FBI and DOJ, considering the fact that the dossier was never vetted and was a politically-motivated document which was used in court filings.

President Donald Trump’s tweet on March 4th accusing Obama of wiretapping him may have immediately attracted mockery, but over a year later, we’re learning that there were likely some very grave surveillance abuses during his Administration.

Do you think it’s time for a second special counsel to investigate Obama? Tell us your thoughts below!

By Matt

Matt is the co-founder of Unbiased America and a freelance writer specializing in economics and politics. He’s been published... More about Matt

Mentioned in this article: