That's the only thing one can conclude upon reading a report like this, from investigative aces Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, who got hold of more evidence of deep-state conniving:
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 [Shellenberger's and Taibbi's web sites] 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.
The reporters noted that the whole thing was the brainchild of then-CIA director John Brennan, who picked out 26 associates of Trump's to target and make contact with. Quite likely, the subjects had absolutely no idea they were targets of a hostile operation and probably handed over scads of information in the interest of global security -- anything to help the men and women on the frontlines out.
They would have been assuming that the whole thing was lawful as they would have known that there was a law saying that intelligence agencies are not to spy on domestic targets, particularly democratically elected officials, so they would have assumed that that was not happening.
Trump was not elected when this spying went on, but he was close enough, and there really was no pretext for this kind of activity to go on. It's well-known that despite Trump's call for rapprochment with the Russians, the Russians at the time were betting on Hillary Clinton winning that race along with most of the swampers in D.C. so even they weren't interested in him.
Brennan got around this legal prohibition against spying on democratically elected leaders by getting other nations, with which we share intelligence, to do the dirty work at at the same time make himself technically in the clear.
After that, when intelligence officials claimed with seeming innocence that they were just following up on a tip-off about Trump and the Russians from, say, the Australians, the fix was in. They got exactly what they wanted, a tipoff, which created the "right" to spy on 26 Trump campaign officials with a little fudging of the FISA warrants (slap on the wrist there), all because they thought up the idea of getting the allies to do the spying for them.
Funny how this stuff works. So very convenient. So very orchestrated. So very staged.
And so very KGB-ish, illegal, and anti-democratic.
What it tells us is that maybe the "five eyes" alliance is really just a global superspy agency that probably needs to be scrapped, given how it's being used against Trump and the people who supported and voted for him. Unless allies can agree not to spy on elected officials and candidates for high office from other five-eyes countries and for that matter, other close non-five-eyes allies, the deal should to be off, no free intel for you.
Someone needs to be punished for this, they weren't doing their job properly, they were taking the power to spy entrusted to them and turning it for domestic purposes, and if that is not nipped in the bud, what we have now is a multi-national KGB.
It's absolutely outrageous how underhanded they are and how sleazy their tactics. Obviously, they will stop at nothing, which is why they ought to broken up and stopped the hard way.
But don't you see? They've got a country to run.
Related:
John Brennan: 2024-02-14 CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say
John Brennan: 2023-11-10 FEC complaint alleges coordinated disinformation campaign from Biden's 2020 run
John Brennan: 2023-09-20 Mayorkas Names Russia Hoaxers, Laptop Deniers Brennan, Clapper to Intelligence ‘Experts' Panel
John Brennan: 2024-02-14 CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say
John Brennan: 2023-11-10 FEC complaint alleges coordinated disinformation campaign from Biden's 2020 run
John Brennan: 2023-09-20 Mayorkas Names Russia Hoaxers, Laptop Deniers Brennan, Clapper to Intelligence ‘Experts' Panel