(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Journalist Matt Taibbi released a bombshell report Tuesday, writing that Barack Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, had targeted at least 26 Trump campaign officials ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
According to Taibbi’s report, the CIA’s targeting of the Trump officials happened “long before the summer of 2016,” which would predate the FBI’s Russiagate investigation. The report suggested that the CIA’s operation helped launch Russiagate.
“Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In truth, the US [intelligence community] asked the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies,” Taibbi wrote. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Taibbi’s report raises questions about why Special Counsel John Durham didn’t disclose the CIA’s involvement when he investigated the Russiagate probe. Durham released a report last year, finding that the FBI had no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion when it began its investigation, but Durham’s work fell far short of what Trump and his allies had hoped for.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has gone as far as to accuse Durham of being a part of the coverup. Gaetz said this when Durham insisted he couldn’t find Joseph Mifsud, an intelligence asset who initially contacted the Trump campaign, claiming that the Russians have dirt on Hillary Clinton.
According to Taibbi, evidence that Durham failed to bring to light may still be out there.
“Unknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term,” Taibbi added, citing sources “close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigation.”
The whereabouts of the alleged thick binder are reportedly unknown, according to the New York Post.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
