{"id":94375,"date":"2018-02-12T18:28:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T22:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=94375"},"modified":"2018-02-12T18:28:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T22:28:41","slug":"94375","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=94375","title":{"rendered":"Federal abuses on Obama&#8217;s watch represent a growing blight on his legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"590\" height=\"332\" src=\"http:\/\/launch.newsinc.com\/?type=VideoPlayer\/Single&#038;widgetId=1&#038;trackingGroup=69016&#038;playlistId=19132&#038;siteSection=ndn&#038;videoId=33529559\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" noresize marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>BY MONICA CROWLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR<br \/>\nThe Hill<\/p>\n<p>In all of the discussions about the political weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, alleged corruption at the highest echelons of those agencies and serial abuse of the secret FISA process surrounding the 2016 election, one name has been conspicuously absent: President\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/barack-obama\" data-nid=\"188226\">Barack Obama<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>High-ranking officials and other major players in those agencies \u2014 which Obama oversaw \u2014 are increasingly embroiled in the growing scandal:\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/james-comey\" data-nid=\"365988\">James Comey<\/a><\/span>, Loretta Lynch,\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/andrew-mccabe\" data-nid=\"372194\">Andrew McCabe<\/a><\/span>, Andrew Weissmann,\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/sally-yates\" data-nid=\"365869\">Sally Yates<\/a><\/span>, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr.<\/p>\n<p>Given the tight control Obama exercised over every part of his administration and agenda, the idea that any of these appointees and loyalists freelanced their activities without at least his tacit approval or that of his White House strains credulity.<\/p>\n<p>These kinds of abuses of power were nothing new, given the Obama team\u2019s long history of this type of misconduct on everything from the Benghazi terror attack to the political misuse of the IRS.\u00a0They weaponized the most fearsome government agencies to target, monitor and presumably illegally unmask political opponents, including members of Congress, journalists reporting unfavorable stories, Trump allies and average Americans.<\/p>\n<p>These dark institutional offenses didn\u2019t just materialize out of thin air.\u00a0One of the criticisms of President Nixon was that even though he wasn\u2019t aware of the Watergate break-in, he had created an environment in which such an action was acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>Decades later, Obama created a climate in which the potentially criminal misuse of the DOJ and the FBI, as currently being unraveled, was not just acceptable but perhaps encouraged, thereby giving rise to what could be the most dangerous scandal in American history.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s increasingly apparent that these recently exposed abuses of power served two ostensible purposes: to secure\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/hillary-clinton\" data-nid=\"188224\">Hillary Clinton<\/a><\/span>\u2019s candidacy by shielding her from prosecution stemming from the use of her unauthorized private server, and to derail the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p>But something else, something more profound, drove their efforts: their urgency to preserve what Obama once called \u201cthe fundamental transformation of the nation\u201d \u2014 a grand project much bigger than Obama himself or any other single figure. He largely fulfilled the long-held progressive ambition of changing the nation\u2019s course, only to see Trump threaten to change it once again: not to return it to where it was pre-Obama, but to smash the corrupt existing order that had made their progressive advances possible.<\/p>\n<p>Obama and the leftist movement over which he has presided could not tolerate a reversal of their gains (by Trump, no less!), so they got to work.<\/p>\n<p>On the offensive side, these Obama officials \u2014 who obviously loathe Trump, as demonstrated by the glaring antipathy in the Strzok\u2013Page texts and others\u2019 communications \u2014 set out to damage him. Trump, they thought, gave them much material with which to work, plus they enjoyed a compliant media that stood ready to amplify spoon-fed narratives, regardless of their veracity. The acquisition of multiple FISA warrants \u2014 now known to be largely based on an unverified dossier prepared by a foreign spy, using anonymous Russian and close Clinton associates and paid for by her campaign and the Democratic National Committee \u2014 to subvert and impair Trump and his associates, succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.<\/p>\n<p>On the defensive side, Herculean efforts were made by the Obama DOJ and FBI to stonewall the Clinton investigation, not out of any real love for Hillary but because they needed to ensure a Democratic win and the continuance of their \u201ctransformative\u201d agenda. Further, with Clinton at the helm, evidence of all of their previous abuses would never see the light of day.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, the forward march to safeguard her.<\/p>\n<p>In October 2015, Obama told \u201c60 Minutes\u201d\u00a0that, while Clinton made a \u201cmistake\u201d using a private server, \u201cthis is not a situation in which America\u2019s national security was endangered.\u201d The signal to his law enforcement lieutenants to back off could not have been clearer.<\/p>\n<p>As the National Review\u2019s Andrew McCarthy has reported, Obama knowingly and repeatedly sent communications to Clinton via her nongovernment, unsecured email and server. One assumes those emails involved classified information, not yoga schedules. That meant if Clinton were guilty of committing felonies, so was Obama.\u00a0Because they were joined at the hip over this and other toxic controversies, such as Benghazi, she required protection in order to protect him. To this day, they survive or fall together. Hence, Obama\u2019s support of her candidacy over his preferred choice,\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/joe-biden\" data-nid=\"188332\">Joe Biden<\/a><\/span>, and the necessity of the email cover-up.<\/p>\n<p>He and his allies have never taken their eyes off the prize. They cannot allow their progressive gains to be erased (and replaced by far more successful economic and national security policies) and their history of abuses to be exposed. Having never expected a Trump victory, the Obama and Clinton squads have been throwing the kitchen sink at him in an effort to protect themselves \u2014 and to try to backstop their hard-won \u201ctransformative\u201d achievements.<\/p>\n<p>Restoring the progressive revolution is also why loyal Obama soldiers such as Biden and\u00a0<span class=\"rollover-people\" data-behavior=\"rolloverpeople\"><a class=\"rollover-people-link\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/eric-holder\" data-nid=\"188153\">Eric Holder<\/a><\/span>\u00a0are considering White House runs. In the meantime, they must try to destroy Trump, his agenda, and the investigations that are quickly turning against them. After all, if Trump doesn\u2019t just endure but succeeds, Obama, Clinton, their brigades and the larger decades-long radical movement have everything to lose.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/white-house\/373379-federal-abuses-a-growing-blight-on-obamas-legacy\">http:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/white-house\/373379-federal-abuses-a-growing-blight-on-obamas-legacy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}