For years, the mainstream media falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama’s administration was “scandal free.”
As soon as Thursday, one of Obama’s top legal aides is expected to be arrested — and that could be just the beginning.
According to Attorney General William Barr, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe didn’t just uncover criminal corruption.
There may be evidence that the Obama administration illegally spied on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“I think spying did occur,” Barr told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated. I’m not suggesting it was not adequately predicated — but I need to explore that.”
The Horn News has reported on the Obama scandal — dubbed Spygate — for years.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley confirmed on Fox Business Network that “people were wiretapped. People were looked into and spied upon. That should be a serious question that the American people should demand answers for and quite frankly so should Congress.”
Claiming Obama spied on Trump’s presidential campaign “is entirely accurate,” Bryon York, a deeply-connected D.C. insider, wrote in The Washington Examiner.
“It is a fact that in October 2016 the FBI wiretapped Carter Page, who had earlier been a short-term foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign,” York said. “The bureau’s application to a secret court for that wiretapping is public. It is heavily redacted but is clearly focused on Page and ‘the Russian government’s attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.’ Page was wiretapped because of his connection with the Trump campaign.”
Mueller’s probe concluded that there was zero evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russian government.
However, at least one Obama insider is expected to be indicted because of what the probe uncovered — and only Barr and Mueller knows what other evidence it contains.
Former Obama administration White House counsel Greg Craig expects to be charged in a foreign lobbying investigation spun off from Mueller’s probe, his lawyers said. The Wall Street Journal reported that his indictment and arrest may come as soon as Thursday.
“Mr. Craig is not guilty of any charge and the government’s stubborn insistence on prosecuting Mr. Craig is a misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion,” the attorneys, William Taylor and William Murphy, said in a statement Wednesday.
The investigation into Craig comes as the Justice Department is cracking down on unregistered foreign lobbying and consulting. Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating two prominent Washington lobbying firms in a similar probe, and Justice Department officials in Washington have been increasingly willing to prosecute people who they believe intentionally conceal their lobbying work from the federal government.
The scrutiny of Craig stems from an investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his work on behalf of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. If filed, the charges would come about three months after Craig’s former law firm agreed to pay more than $4.6 million and publicly acknowledge that it failed to register with the government for its work for the Ukraine.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is a decades-old law meant to allow Americans to know when foreign entities are trying to influence public opinion or policymakers. The law, enacted in 1938 to unmask Nazi propaganda in the United States, requires people to disclose to the Justice Department when they advocate, lobby or perform public relations work in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government or political entity.
In the last few years, the Justice Department has brought several high-profile prosecutions involving FARA. That includes a case against Manafort, who was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
So much for a “scandal free” administration.
FLASHBACK: Obama wiretap “smoking gun” to be revealed soon
The Associated Press contributed to this article