by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag
Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016.
Now, multiple credible sources tell Public and Racket that the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.
The new information fills many gaps in our understanding of the Russia collusion hoax and is supported by testimony already in the public record.
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 IC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
After Public and Racket had been told that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target, a source confirmed that the IC had “identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”
