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House Intelligence Committee Ranking MemberAdam Schiff is in high dudgeonover the bad form of House Intelligence Chairman DevinNunes in reporting his bombshell -- that the chairmanhad been shown actual surveillance(not involving Russia)of the Trump transition team and possibly of the then president-elect himself -- to President Trump before he presented the evidence to the committee.

Bad form, quite possibly. But so what?

The facts are what they are.

What appears at this writing is thatTrump transition team members and possibly Trump himself had their identities revealed, were"unmasked" in the parlance, while foreign diplomats were being surveilled.The identitiesof American citizens werenot sufficiently "minimized," as they arerequired to be by law.This is a crime one would assume wouldput the perpetrators in prison. So far it hasn't. More than that, such behavior isa grave threat to a free society, to all of us.

In effect, Trump was wiretapped -- if not in the corny, old sense of the word, something very close. Technologically, he was wiretapped, as were several(actually many) others.

A fair amountofthis happened not long beforeBarack Obamasuddenlychanged the rules regarding raw intelligence, for the first timeeverallowing the NSA to share its data with 16 other intelligence agencies, thus making thedissemination of said data (i. e. leaking) many times more likely.That was done on January 12, 2017, just three scant days before Trump's inauguration. Why did the then president finally decideto make that particularchangeat that extremely late date, rather than on one of the previous seven years and three hundred fifty-three days of his presidency? You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes or Watson to smell a rat. Something's rottensomewhere -- and it's not Denmark.

Whether Barack Obama ordered the surveillance of Donald Trump during the transition is not the question. He would never have had to. In fact, he would have beenhighly unlikely to have done so for obvious legal and practical/political reasons. Instead, supporters of the thenpresident in a position to authorize or activate such surveillance would normally know or assume his wishesanywaywithout having to be told and could act accordingly.

That is the way of the world since there was a world.

The operative question is whether these recorded conversations then ever wound up on Obama's desk or whether he knew about themin some other manner... and, if so, when.If the worst istrue, itis a scandal that makesWatergate seem like a child's prank. Even Watergate's own Bob Woodward seemed to acknowledge as much on The O'Reilly Factor on Wednesday night.

This is why any legitimate investigation by a congressional committee or anyone else must encompass both Obama and Trump. This is a two-part story. If both parties are not investigated -- they cannot be separated -- this is no more than a partisan show. Further, the press cannot even faintly be trusted to investigate or adjudicatethis matter. Their bias is so overwhelming it would sink the Titanic twice.

See more here:
Time to Investigate Obama, not Just Trump - PJ Media

We checked a statement by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

In his opening statement at a closely watched hearing about possible Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., criticized United States policy toward Russia under President Barack Obama.

"In recent years, committee members have issued repeated and forceful pleas for stronger actions against Russian belligerence, but the Obama administration was committed to the notion, against all evidence, that we could reset relations with Putin," Nunes said.

This description of the Obama administrations position struck us as one-sided, so we took a closer look. We asked Nunes's office for comment, but didn't hear back.

We concludedits misleading for Nunes to have ignored at least three years of the Obama administration in which the reset policy was dead, replaced by a much tougher line on Moscow.

How the reset came about

In March 2009, about two months after Obama was sworn in, his administration initiated a new policy toward Russia called the "reset." The official kickoff came in Geneva on March 6, 2009, when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov a red button.

The new policy came less than a year after conflict flared in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions of Georgia, an independent country that was previously part of the Soviet Union. Obamas foreign policy team had decided that the United States had a window of opportunity to find common ground on certain issues with Russia, given that Dmitry Medvedev had replaced Vladimir Putin as president in mid 2008.

The administration -- and some outside observers -- credit the reset with some achievements, at least initially.

During the period when the reset was U.S. policy, the two nations signed a nuclear-arms treaty; reached an agreement to allow U.S. troops and weapons destined for Afghanistan to be sent through Russian territory rather than Pakistan; collaborated on tough United Nations sanctions against Iran; achieved Russian membership in the World Trade Organization; and agreed that Russia would not use a U.N. Security Council veto to block a bombing campaign in Libya by the United States and its European allies.

As time went on, though, the reset drew increasing criticism. In 2011, former chess champion and human-rights activist Garry Kasparov criticized both Obama and Putin, telling the Daily Beast that the reset was "a disaster." And Douglas J. Feith, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy during the George W. Bush administration, co-wrote an article in Foreign Policy that called the reset "a head-shaking disappointment."

The reset peters out

The era of cooperation began to come apart in 2012 -- not coincidentally, the year Putin returned to the presidency after Medvedevs term.

Large street protests in his 2012 presidential campaign "had unnerved Mr. Putin, and he accused Mrs. Clinton of instigating them," the New York Times reported. "White House officials had hoped the hostile talk was just for domestic campaign purposes, but even after Mr. Putin formally won re-election, he kept it up."

Relations worsened further in 2013, when Russia took in Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who had leaked a large trove of sensitive intelligence.

The last straw, however, came in 2014 with Russias intervention in Ukraine. A popular revolution overthrew pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, another former Soviet republic that became independent after the end of the Cold War. Russia responded by applying military pressure in pro-Russian regions of Ukraine and eventually annexing Crimea.

In addition to strongly condemning Russias actions, the United States worked with its European allies to impose a series of escalating sanctions on Moscow starting on March 6, 2014.

The sanctions "inflicted real costs on Russia," said Dan Nexon, a Georgetown University foreign service professor.

Emma Ashford, a research fellow with expertise on Russia at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that while the reset was "dying" between 2012 and 2014, the sanctions were a turning point.

"By 2014, with turmoil in Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Crimea, there was no longer any real attempt to seek the reset," she said. "In fact, the Obama administration pursued a strong sanctions policy against Russia, and contributed troops to bolster NATO forces in Eastern Europe."

Other experts agreed.

"Certainly by March 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, there was no evidence of any ongoing Obama administration commitment to the reset," added Susan H. Allen, a foreign policy specialist at George Mason University. "The U.S. condemnation of the annexation of Crimea was clear and unequivocal."

"By 2014, I don't know how anyone could credibly argue that U.S. policy was the reset policy," added Richard Nephew, a research scholar at Columbia University.

Our ruling

Nunes said, "In recent years ... the Obama administration was committed to the notion, against all evidence, that we could reset relations with Putin."

Nunes summary of U.S. policy toward Russia is at best incomplete. The Obama administration did pursue a reset policy, and kept it up arguably as late as 2014. But observers agree that the policy was dead no later than early 2014, when Russia intervened in Ukraine, and was already in question for two years before that.

Nunes statement is misleadingly oversimplified, so we rate it Half True.

Originally posted here:
Devin Nunes oversimplifies timeline of Obama 'reset' with Russia - PolitiFact

New York Times

Opposition and a Shave: Former Obama Aides Counter Trump New York Times They were co-authors of Mr. Obama's 2011 speech at the White House Correspondents Association dinner that lampooned Mr. Trump so harshly that it helped form his decision to make a real presidential bid, I'll-show-'em style. (The speech depicted him as ...

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Opposition and a Shave: Former Obama Aides Counter Trump - New York Times

Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former White House aide to President Obama, criticized President Trumps repeated allegations that Mr. Obama had ordered a wiretap surveillance of Trump Tower.

Former White House deputy chief of staff of operations Alyssa Mastromonaco.

CBS News

On CBS This Morning Monday, co-anchor Charlie Rose asked how angry President Obama was about Mr. Trumps allegations of wiretapping.

I dont know how angry he is, Mastromonaco said. I know the rest of us were pretty pissed.

Because? Because its insane. Because its an insane accusation. And its an insane accusation for a president to accuse another president of, and also for anyone who knows Barack Obama. He wouldnt do that.

She also described the turmoil of the Trump administrations first two months in office as pretty uncommon. The first 100 days, youre always trying to get your bearings, and it seems that anything that existed before them, theyre just shooting down for sport, whether its protocol or bills.

Mastromonaco, who served as deputy chief of staff of operations for Obama -- the youngest woman ever to do so -- acknowledged that she preferred a behind the scenes role, rather than to appear on camera.

I had never been a person who was out there, she said, recalling her interview years earlier with Charlie Rose. I didnt think that my job was to be on camera. It was to be running things. And there are people who should be out there and people running things, and I decided just to stay behind the scenes.

Twelve

Her new book is called Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House (Twelve).

Co-anchor Gayle King asked, You talk about being a woman in the old boys club and how at times it was intimidating, but other times you said, Oh, no, Im going to show people how its done here. Not in an arrogant way, but you were very confident.

I was, Mastromonaco replied. Well, I knew what I knew, and I think thats one of my strengths. I know what I know, and I know what I dont know. So if we were talking about going on a foreign trip and the National Security Council wanted to put in an extra couple of stops, I was like, No, were not going to do that. And when it came to the president, [he] was so wonderful about also understanding peoples strengths and weaknesses and knowing that, if I said that, Alyssa is probably right.

At one time he said, Remember your words have power.

He did. That had never actually occurred to me. I was very upset about something someone had said to a reporter, and I wrote a sort of unhinged e-mail to the entire senior staff. I was like, We should have each others backs, so I was very upset. I thought everyone would ignore it, but someone told the president about it, and he felt the need to talk to me about the strength of my words.

The books title comes from Mr. Obama, Mastromonaco said. Because if he was on the road and you got an e-mail that said, Who thought this was a good idea? -- which was not uncommon -- you knew that he knew you thought it was a good idea, and he wanted you to just own your decision, which I always did. It was my idea.

She told CBS This Morning that her goal was to get women more interested and excited about government.

I think that this book, hopefully, makes government a little bit more relatable, a little bit less scary, she said. Really, if you have the passion and commitment, you can do it. You dont have to be Harvard-educated with a dad who was a congressman to work in the White House.

Mastromonaco said the book underwent many iterations. I actually had a much harder time -- when I was trying to be a little bit more lofty. I struggled. I ended up on Zoloft trying to do it.

She then got advice from a friend, comedian Mindy Kaling. She said, Write one essay for every chapter and it will come. So I wrote one essay per chapter, and I got a cowriter who understood me, Lauren Oyler, and she totally pulled the great stuff out of me. And we realized this is exactly the book we wanted.

For more info:

Read the rest here:
Former Obama aide: Trump's wiretap claim is "insane" - CBS News

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On the roster: - Trump makes Dems chase tails on Obama tapping - Sharp lines drawn as Gorsuch gets underway - What could determine Gorsuchs fate? - Audible: Better wed than red - What about Don?

TRUMP MAKES DEMS CHASE TAILS ON OBAMA TAPPING Say what you will aboutPresident Trumps claims that his predecessor was spying on him during the 2016 campaign, they have been a remarkably effective distraction.

Given the chance to publicly interrogate FBI DirectorJamesComeyand National Security Agency DirectorMikeRogersabout Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign a topic that should be an absolute field day for the blue team Democrats instead devoted much of their questioning to disproving Trumps apparently baseless claim.

Yes, Democrats coaxed Comey into revealing some potent conclusions, especially the unambiguous declaration that Russian interference was aimed at harming Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that the Kremlin had a distinct preference for Trump in the election.

But still, the foamy froth over Trumps tweeted allegations took up an enormous amount of time.

As one senior Republican aide on Capitol Hill put it to Halftime Report about Trump and his distractions: You never know if the guy is crazy or an absolute genius.

And, to be fair, it was pretty crazy for Trump as a sitting president to throw out an unsupported accusation againstBarackObamaof such magnitude. Reckless, even.

But the genius part was revealed today as Democrats continued to chase the red herring through much of Comeys and Rogers testimonies.

Democrats may think it a victory to get Comey to say publicly what everyone already knew: that there was no evidence of illegal Obama-ordered wiretaps of Trump, but thats pretty small beer.

The bigger takeaway for the days work ought to have been Comeys public confirmation of an ongoing investigation into whether or not anyone associated with Trumps campaign was colluding with Russian entities during the election. We knew, or at least had reason to suspect as much, before.

But because Comey has publicly declared the existence of an investigation, that means that in the probably near future there will be findings released. Either Trump and his associates will be given a clean bill of health, or criminal charges will be laid. And finally we can have some resolution.

Until that moment, however, its all about shaping the precious narrative. And in that game Trumps either intentional or accidental misinformation about Obama turns out to be very useful to the new president.

Many of Trumps supporters no doubt readily believe Trumps claims, despite debunking. Trumps critics, meanwhile, have been busy chasing their tails trying to disprove the disprovable.

As far as actually governing the nation, it hasnt been so hot. The resultant spat with Britain over some of the charges was a wasteful embarrassment. But as political theater, its been a pretty potent misdirection play.

THE RULEBOOK: CHOICE OF A LIFETIME The want of a provision for removing the judges on account of inability has been a subject of complaint. But all considerate men will be sensible that such a provision would either not be practiced upon or would be more liable to abuse than calculated to answer any good purpose.Alexander Hamilton,Federalist No. 79

TIME OUT:FEEL THE BEAT Legendary artist Chuck Berry, who died Saturday at 90-years-old, was often thought to be the father of rock n roll, with unparalleled talent. But his depictions of post-WWII America is what gives his music lasting meaning. Atlantic: The singer in Promised Land is, like the guitar-slinging [Johnny B. Goode], a young man on the make. Starting off from home in Norfolk, Virginia, in a Greyhound, the singer wants to make it to California to make his name. The song is an atlas of Americagreat cities like New Orleans and Atlanta crop up, but so do smaller ones like Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like his contemporaries the Beat Poets, the singer is determined to travel, but unlike them he does not have the tendency toward (nor, perhaps, the privilege of) shiftlessness.

Flag on the play? -Email us atHALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COMwith your tips, comments or questions.

SHARP LINES DRAWN AS GORSUCH GETS UNDERWAY Fox News: The first day of hearings [on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court] in the Senate Judiciary Committee opened with Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley expressing his overarching views on the high court before championing Gorsuch, saying judges play a limited role in government and are not free to update the Constitution. Thats not their job. That power is retained by the people, acting through their elected representatives, the Iowa Republican said before arguing the Obama administration tried rewriting federal laws dozens of times.

[Heres a look at how the current Supreme Court justices made it through their hearings.]

What could determine Gorsuchs fate? - FiveThirtyEights Harry Enten argues public opinion has a pretty hefty factor for Supreme Court nominees: Importantly, the public likes Gorsuch.And while the public doesnt vote on Supreme Court nominees, my analysis of past votes suggests public approval is correlated with how many votes a nominee receives in the Senate once you control for other factors. Public pressure, for example,is partof what helped Clarence Thomas get confirmed. In pretty muchevery single survey taken so far, more Americans have supported Gorsuchs confirmation than opposed it. Gorsuch doesnt have quite the approval5that many nominees over the past 30 years have had, but hes not far off.

Hurts so good: Gorsuch and the corpse flower - WashTimes: Already, Democrats in the Senate have declared that they have no interest in taking Judge Gorsuch or his confirmation hearings seriously. The high burden of proof that Judge Gorsuch has to meet is largely a result of the president who nominated him, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who was elected to the Senate from the ridiculous state of Connecticut despite repeatedly lying about fighting in the Vietnam War. In other words, according to Mr. Blumenthal, its all about politics. Nothing to do with the Constitution. He doesnt like the president, so he will never vote for Judge Gorsuchs confirmation.

PLAY-BY-PLAY Trumps new job approval rating hits new low - Gallup

Ryan says House GOP making fine-tuning adjustments to health bill - Fox News

Cabinet agencies reportedly crabby over White House minders in their midst - WaPo AUDIBLE: BETTER WED THAN RED You dont ever send anyone back to the commies. American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp recounting to the WaPo his opening gambit in his courtship with his now wife, Mercedes, the daughter of Cuban refugees who began their first debate demanding to know his position on the repatriation of Elian Gonzales.

FROM THE BLEACHERS Do you know or will you find out if the proposed American Health Care Act covers and mandates that [members of Congress], their staff and Federal employees use the system and their existing programs are abolished? Frank Bolton, Phoenix

[Ed. note: Good question! One of the requirements under ObamaCare is for members of Congress and their staffs to obtain coverage through the health insurance exchanges set up under the law. They are free to take their employer contribution and buy any coverage available, so its something of an empty gesture, but it does at least require lawmakers to experience the annoyances of an additional layer of bureaucracy in obtaining coverage. What we dont know is whether that requirement will persist if ObamaCare morphs into TrumpCare. With a proposed 3-step process for instituting the new system it may be too soon to say, and as reporters from the Columbus Dispatch found out, theres not a lot of clarity on the subject. But we will keep watching. Thanks for reading and taking the time to write.]

I am amazed that you call the President of the US Trump in most of you writings.I think I only saw one time President Trump. However, you call Pres. Obama, Pres. GW Bush, etc. Time to remind you who Trump is? Also you are the only one that calls the new Health care Trumpcare. Euthymia Hibbs, Cleveland

[Ed. note: Ms. Hibbs, there is no disrespect meant by referring to the president by his last name alone on second reference. We do deviate from the Associated Press style in one way, however. AP changed eight years ago to always use the sitting presidents full name on first reference, e.g. President Barack Obama, rather than President Obama. I find that unnecessary since everyone knows who were talking about when we say President Trump. But it is certainly not necessary to repeat any office holders title on second reference. Trump will do just fine. As for the health bill he has helped craft and is currently selling, TrumpCare is a helpful disambiguation from ObamaCare.]

In case the panda ribs business doesnt work out for you, it might be time to revisit Jonathan Swifts A Modest Proposal. Chuck Howard, Tunica, Miss.

[Ed. note: Now, Mr. Howard, unlike Swift and the poor children of Ireland, I am calling for more pandas. Were I to have my way, they would be as common as cows!]

Share your color commentary:Email us atHALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COMand please make sure to include your name and hometown. WHAT ABOUT DON? BBC: An archbishop in Sicily has moved to reclaim the term godfather from the mafia - by banning gangsters from taking the role at baptisms. Michele Pennisi, a vocal mafia critic, has his diocese in Monreale, near Palermo. He said he wanted to challenge the idea that crime bosses have a paternal side. The mafia has always taken the term godfather from the Church to give its bosses an air of religious respectability, he told AFP. Whereas in fact, the two worlds are completely incompatible. Archbishop Pennisis diocese includes the notorious village of Corleone, a vendetta-torn enclave made famous by Mario Puzos novel The Godfather.

ChrisStirewaltis the politics editor for Fox News.Sally Personscontributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign uphere.

Chris Stirewalt joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in July of 2010 and serves as digital politics editor based in Washington, D.C. Additionally, he authors the daily "Fox News First" political news note and hosts "Power Play," a feature video series, on FoxNews.com. Stirewalt makes frequent appearances on the network, including "The Kelly File," "Special Report with Bret Baier," and "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace." He also provides expert political analysis for Fox News coverage of state, congressional and presidential elections.

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Trump makes Dems chase tails on Obama tapping - Fox News