Watergate-style spying is unnecessary, if spy warrants are routinely granted by courts for Democrats
Trump Versus the Hive, Part 28
Watergate-style spying is unnecessary, if spy warrants are routinely granted by courts for Democrats
Nixon’s agents in 1972 broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to try to discover the plans of his political opponents, and then covered it up. When it was discovered, it was heinous enough a crime to warrant resignation, if not impeachment and removal. Both political parties agreed.
Today, Republicans wouldn’t dare break into Democratic offices, for their punishment would be the same. And Democrats…they don’t need to.
Democrats don’t need to spy on Republicans, because they can do far better by simply using the system they control. Today, Democrats can apparently routinely obtain warrants to “legally” spy on Republicans like Trump, with little or no consequences if the application is rejected, or even later deemed to contain false information.
This is because the Left ideology gains, even if the individual is penalized later. As the Left is far more strongly ideologically influenced than the Right, many Left-leaning FBI, DOJ, AGs, prosecutors, and judges are willing to act outside the rules for the greater ideological goal of stopping Trump.
Democrats obtained warrants for electronic surveillance to spy on the Trump campaign of 2016 by convincing a judge he was a threat to National security. Agents were able to obtain four warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to spy (electronic surveillance) on Trump’s political advisors leading up to the 2016 election.[1] Of course, they were later declared faulty and without probable cause, after the damage was done. Obama, despite being president, and reportedly in meetings where this was discussed, is somehow blameless through all this.
The House Ways and Means Committee led by Democrats waged a three-year legal battle to obtain Trump’s tax returns arguing they were necessary for legislative work, got them, and released them.
The FBI raided the office of former Trump attorney Robert Cohen, pursuant to an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan regarding the Stormy Daniels payment.[3] Attorney-client privilege was voided and Robert Cohen was made to turn on his former client under threat of jail time.
The FBI obtained a warrant from U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to raid Trump’s home in Mar-A-Lago and sieze documents, despite an ongoing civil case regarding the documents.
Also, Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a secret warrant getting access to all of Trump’s Twitter communications and account information, location and other information, and obtained an order sealing the warrant, so Trump could not be notified. Twitter raised a number of legal arguments including the First Amendment, and ultimately was fined $350,000 for delaying release for three days during legal challenges.
What one needs to understand about the 4th Amendment is, if a search is unlawful, anything found is inadmissible. However, if a permitted search for one reason doesn’t turn up anything, but the search leads to the discovery of other things they weren’t even looking for, if those other things can be fashioned into a crime, are admissible, and prosecutable.
That’s why they wanted Trump’s tax returns under one excuse, because any error they find can be prosecuted. In short, the government has been on a fishing expedition against Trump looking for anything to prosecute with since the start.
When judges grant warrants on a high-level political figure, they should be very concerned of assisting the new Watergate-style spying - a political fishing expedition that will go right to the media, and with that media pressure right to the DOJ to prosecute. Today, far more advantageous than spying on political plans, is arresting and charging a political opponent, his advisers, cabinet, lawyers, and family, and deterring future advisors and lawyers from working with him. It’s 1000 times more destructive than mere “spying” that the nation had a fit over, and it’s now legal and moral, but only if it’s the Democrats doing it.
A “court” in fundamental principle, is a decider of matters brought before it and presented by all sides. In “secret” warrant applications, the government presents its case, and the person to be “spied on” is not even notified. If one side doesn’t get to present their side, it is not a court.
If there are no penalties when these systems go wrong, and a mere footnote when such processes are found to be unconstitutional or foundational documents falsified, they will happen again.
Interestingly, if Trump had sought a court warrant to spy on, for example, Obama, the court would have likely rejected it, and the media would have made an outrage of it. The court would have rejected it because the narrative in the mainstream media is that Trump is a dictator and a threat to democracy, and most judges would have seen that application through that lens. Likely, some Left-leaning clerk would have leaked the application sacrificing their job for their broader ideological goal of harming Trump. Meanwhile, conservative judges, would have denied it because of a value system of strongly adhering to the Constitution and being very cautious of such usurpation.
In short, the Left media narrative, their ideological makeup, and the nature of Conservativism makes modern-day spying okay for Democrats, and not okay for Republicans.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf
[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-raids-trump-lawyers-office-1523306297