![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/execution-vellejo-696x366-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPresident Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump shake hands following their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016. (AP Photo\/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)<\/h5>\n
It’s bad enough, as has been evident for some time, that Donald Trump and his campaign were being spied upon by our own government, but it’s highly likely they were also subject to literal entrapment–at least a serious attempt was made.<\/p>\n
I don’t mean the entrapment of promulgating the salacious Steele dossier both to the public and the FISA court as if it were the truth. That was more of a smear to justify a phony investigation. I mean something more subtle and LeCarr\u00e9-like coming from the depths of our intelligence communities. It raises once more the question of the power of such agencies in a free society, a conundrum with no easy answers but of great significance to our lives.<\/p>\n
For all his New York rough-and-tumble, Trump was an innocent abroad when he arrived in Washington. Way back in January 2017, he was warned by old-timer\u00a0Chuck Schumer<\/a>\u00a0that “intel officials have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”<\/p>\n The Senate minority leader–Deep Stater\u00a0par excellence<\/em>–knew whereof he spoke. But Trump somehow survived the storm, although sometimes it seemed as if he wouldn’t. Now, some of the obvious parties –John K. Brennan and James Clapper with their apparatchik miens — have suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs, as the\u00a0Washington Times<\/a>\u00a0notes:<\/p>\n Special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s finding that there was no\u00a0Trump<\/a>campaign conspiracy with\u00a0Russia<\/a>\u00a0to steal the 2016 election has unleashed a tsunami of outrage toward Obama-era intelligence chiefs, particularly former\u00a0CIA<\/a>\u00a0Director\u00a0John O. Brennan<\/a>\u00a0and former FBI Director James B. Comey, who are accused of pushing the allegation during congressional hearings, in social media posts and in highly charged interviews on television over the past two years.<\/p>\n Former Director of National Intelligence\u00a0James Clapper<\/a>\u00a0also leveled up highly publicized comments that President\u00a0Trump<\/a>\u00a0could even be an \u201casset\u201d of Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/a>, part of a slew of remarks that critics say went far beyond the usual partisan sniping that can accompany a change of administrations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n More’s afoot here, however, considerably more because the entire American intelligence system and the unique power referred to by Schumer are also now in those same crosshairs, as they should be. But many of the men and women involved are less overtly Soviet in their style than Mssrs. Brennan and Clapper and slip more easily under the radar.<\/p>\n Notable among these, and perhaps able to reveal much of the McGuffin to the mystery of where this all started and how, is Stefan Halper. \u00a0Mr. Halper is “an American\u00a0foreign policy<\/a>\u00a0scholar and Senior Fellow at the\u00a0University of Cambridge<\/a>where he is a Life Fellow at\u00a0Magdalene College<\/a>\u00a0and directs the\u00a0Department of Politics and International Studies<\/a>.” He is also a spook who worked for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, no less, and was a principle American connection to the UK’s MI-6.<\/sup><\/p>\n Mr. Halper has (ahem)\u00a0other connections<\/a>:<\/p>\n A top FBI official admitted to\u00a0Congressional investigators last year that the agency had contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation “Crossfire Hurricane,” which sounds a lot like FBI “informant” Stefan Halper – a former\u00a0Oxford University professor who was\u00a0paid over $1 million<\/a>\u00a0by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly half of it surrounding the 2016 US election.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hmm…. The perspicacious Margot Cleveland had more to say the other day at The Federalist in “Who Launched An Investigation Into Trump’s Campaign Before Crossfire Hurricane.<\/a>“<\/p>\n “Crossfire Hurricane,” as most know, is the codename the wannabe hipsters at the FBI gave the Trump-Russia investigation. But more important is the word “before” in Ms. Cleveland’s title.<\/p>\n The Post further noted that the academic, since\u00a0identified<\/a>\u00a0as Stefan Halper, first met with Trump campaign advisor Carter Page \u201ca few weeks before the opening of the investigation,\u201d and then after Crossfire Hurricane\u2019s July 31, 2016, start, he met again with Carter Page and \u201cwith Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis,\u201d offering the latter his \u201cforeign-policy expertise\u201d for the Trump team. Then in September, Halper \u201creached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign-policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Papadopoulos and Page are the two naifs of the most obvious sort (sorry, guys) we have all seen on television who spent the last couple of years having to defend themselves against absurd charges. Considering the timing, it’s pretty obvious they were being set up (i. e. entrapped) on some level well back during the Obama administration.<\/p>\n Who ordered it is the obvious question, but I’m not going to leave it there. I suggest that an attempt was being made to implant Halper in the Trump campaign, one way or another, not just for spying purposes but actually to help create this collusion of the campaign with Russia–that is, to help manufacture it.<\/p>\n Putting it another way, someone or some group wanted to create — or, more subtly, to\u00a0encourage<\/em>\u00a0the creation — of Trump-Russia collusion from the inside in order to destroy Trump before, or failing that, after he was elected.<\/p>\n How’s that for a nefarious plot? Worthy of LeCarr\u00e9 or maybe even Graham Greene. But is it true? I wouldn’t bet against it. Something close anyway.<\/p>\n By the way, if I am right, this won’t be the first time for Halper. And unfortunately for Republicans, the shoe was then on the proverbial other foot. As\u00a0Glenn Greenwald<\/a>\u00a0wrote last year:<\/p>\n