Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined in studio by all-star panelist Crom Carmichael.
During the second hour, Carmichael detailed the FISA court’s extreme abuse of power and how it allowed for the illegal spying on the Trump campaign and his administration. He was convinced that something needs to be done or else this will create a trend by the next government in power.
Leahy: We are joined as we frequently are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays by the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.
Carmichael: Good morning Michael. How are you?
Leahy: Well, I’m a little sick and tired of all of these repetitive seven dwarf House Democrat arguments. And so if you don’t mind, we’ll get to that. But I’d like to talk about something else in this segment.
Carmichael: I’d be happy to.
Leahy: Let’s talk about what I think maybe one of the most obvious abuses of the judicial process. And that is what’s going on with these FISA courts.
Carmichael: This is not an abuse of the judicial process. These are big-time crimes.
Leahy: Big time crimes.
Carmichael: Big time crimes. What’s happened is that the FISA court has now ruled that two of the FISA warrants sought by the Obama Administration did not meet the standards of probable cause. And they should not have been filed. Now here’s what’s important about that. These were against Carter Page.
Now the way these FISA court warrants work is that they get the secret right to tap into anything Carter Page. His cell phone. His emails. Anything. And then, they have what is called the two-hop rule. OK? And what that means is that anybody who communicates with Carter Page can now be surveilled.
And anyone who communicates with those people can now be surveilled. So here’s what that means. We know for a fact that when Carter Page did take his trip to Russia to do his lecture, he talked to Corey Lewandowski. And Corey Lewandowski said if you want to go give a lecture that’s on you.
It’s at your expense and you have nothing to do with the Trump campaign. That part is clear. But Corey Lewandowski talks to President Trump, and he talks to everybody in the Trump administration. And these warrants, the last one that was issued was after Trump was president.
So they were still surveilling Trump. Trump himself! They were still surveilling Trump under these warrants months into his presidency without his knowledge. Now let me say that Congress is talking about abuse of power as a crime? And this falls under Durham. So what you and I…
Leahy: The special prosecutor John “Bull” Durham.
Carmichael: What you and I are talking about now I would give 100-1 odds that Durham is aware of this and this is now part of his investigation. And so this may also be part of the reason that the Democrats are going after Trump with anything they can possibly find.
Leahy: So let’s just for those of you who’ve heard FISA, the FISA court. It was established by the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. That’s where the FISA comes from. The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also called the FISA court is a US federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Such requests are made most often by the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Congress created FISA and it’s court as a result of a recommendation of the US Senate’s Church Committee. Which was concerned about abuses by the CIA, ironically. I don’t even know why we have a FISA court frankly.
Carmichael: Well, I don’t want to get into whether or not we should have one or not, but let’s look at the last warrant. The last warrant was reauthorized in June of 2017.
Leahy: So let’s go back.
Carmichael: June of 2017. Robert Mueller had already been appointed.
Leahy: He was appointed in May of 2017.
Carmichael: Much of what Robert Mueller collected may have been what they call “fruit from the poisonous tree.”And that is invalid. Because if they were collected by falsely approved FISA warrants and I can’t imagine that they weren’t.
You know these people on CNN and MSNBC, the more I watch the sound clips, these are truly stupid people. And when I say stupid, I mean they literally don’t have the brains to come in out of the rain. They are paid immense amounts of money to simply say what they are told to say. But this revelation that two of the FISA warrants that got renewed four times, two of these things are invalid.
Leahy: Let’s go back. When was the original FISA warrant that you’re talking about that was approved? Was that 2015 or 2016?
Carmichael: 2016.
Leahy: So, I happen to have in front of me some details about the number of surveillance warrants requested by the FBI and the National Security Agency of the court. In 2013 there was 1,588 requests. 1,588 were approved. (Snickers) In 2014, 1,379 requests. 1,379 approved. By 2016 the year in question, 1,485 requests for warrants. 1,451 were approved. This sounds kind of like a rubber stamp to me.
Carmichael: It is. But the FISA court judges take the documents that they’re given. And the documents that they are given are sworn. They are under oath. So when you make a mistake on a FISA warrant, that is a crime. If you do a misspelling of a word, I don’t believe that that is a crime. But if you change the FISA warrant or if you make a claim that is false or if you don’t include information that is germane. Those things are crimes.
Leahy: So the signature on the warrants with the false evidence included…
Carmichael: Yes. Yes.
Leahy: That apparently the FBI knew was false…
Carmichael: Yes.
Leahy: Was also signed by people who knew this information was false. And one of those signatures was… James Comey.
Carmichael: James Comey. And another one was Rosenstein. He was the one that filed the last one. And so this is so much bigger than Watergate. Because Watergate was a two-bit break-in to try to get information on paper. Think about how many people over a period of a year, think about how many different people might have communicated with. Can we agree it might be 100?
Leahy: Yep.
Carmichael: Let’s just say 100. How many people on average did each of those people communicated with? Let’s say it’s only 50. That’s 5,000 people. 5,000 people that the Obama Administration and Brennan and Comey and Clapper were now surveilling. I mean that’s breathtaking.
Leahy: Illegally. But here’s the question…
Carmichael: And criminally. This is really important if we don’t bring these people. If we don’t bring these people to justice then it becomes OK because the precedent is that the government knew about it. Now we know that the government now knows about it. And if the government does nothing then it means that the next people you can say, well you didn’t do anything when the last people did it.
So why are you doing it to me? This is breathtaking. This makes the stuff on impeachment look small ball, to say the least. So this impeachment thing is going to be over I think fairly soon. But let me also say this Mike, there’s no question that the Democrat elites, the infrastructure of the Democrat Party is going after Bernie Sanders.
Carmichael: Oh yeah.
Leahy: They are going once again after Bernie Sanders. And keeping him in Washington and forcing him to stay in Washington for an impeachment trial might be exactly part of their strategy.
Leahy: They are obstructing the presidential election process with that. (Chuckles)
Carmichael: They are clearly meddling and guilty of meddling in their own 2020 Democratic primary. They are guilty of that.
Listen to the second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Carter Page” by MSNBC. CC BY 3.0. Background Photo “FISA Court” by AgnosticPreachersKid. CC BY-SA 3.0.
