Lesley Stahl of CBS News seen without a mask after interviewing President Donald Trump. (Video screenshot)
In her interview with President Trump that aired Sunday night, "60 Minutes" reporter Lesley Stahl claimed the charge that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign has "never been verified," contrary to a Department of Justice inspector general report.
"They spied on my campaign," Trump said.
"But there's no ... real evidence of that," Stahl retorted.
Trump: "Of course there is."
Stahl: "No."
Trump: "It's all over the place, Lesley."
Stahl: "Sir."
Trump: "They spied on my campaign and they got caught."
Margot Cleveland, senior contributor to the Federalist said it was "flabbergasting" that Stahl didn't know that Inspector General Michael Horowitz verified that the Obama-Biden administration obtained warrants to surveil the Trump campaign through the bogus Democrat-funded Steele dossier.
"And it is beyond inexcusable that Stahl did not conduct even a cursory investigation into the question after last week Tuesday’s interview — or if she did, she buried the results," Cleveland said.
Charging he was treated unfairly, the president released a full recording of the interview before it aired. Stahl asked the president about his biggest domestic priority for a second term and called him a liar. In an interview with Vice President Mike Pence, she complainted he was not answering her questions and had "insulted 60 Minutes."
Cleveland pointed out that nearly a year ago, the inspector general's 478-page "exposed substantial abuse in the targeting of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page with the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications submitted to a secret court to obtain a court order to surveil Page."
"Most significantly, the report established what conservatives had been explaining since Rep. Devin Nunes released his memorandum on the FISA abuse: that surveilling Page was surveilling the Trump campaign."
She noted that while Page was no longer working with the Trump campaign at the time of the first FISA surveillance order, the order "authorized the FBI to access prior communications between Page and members of the campaign — something the IG report noted the Crossfire Hurricane team recognized as a possibility, namely 'that the FISA collection would include sensitive political campaign-related information.'"
Cleveland said "it was the goal" of the Obama administration's action to intercept "campaign information."
"The IG report went further, and verified that the FBI actually accessed campaign communications. For instance, the IG report stated that 'Gabriel Sanz-Rexach, the chief of the Office of Intelligence’s Operations Section, explained 'that the evidence collected during the first FISA application time period demonstrated that Carter Page had access to individuals in Russia and he was communicating with people in the Trump campaign.'' Horowitz’s report then explicitly stated that his team 'identified a few emails between Page and members of the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign concerning campaign-related matters.'"
She noted there also was "human" spying on Trump, including by the FBI.
"The IG report reveal[ed] that on August 17, 2016, 'the FBI dispatched a supervisor of the Crossfire Hurricane team, known broadly to be FBI Agent Joe Pientka, to a private security briefing for then-candidate Trump and Flynn.' The reason? '[T]o 'assess' Flynn in anticipation of a 'subject interview,'' and to 'overhear, whatever it was.'"
She pointed out that all of it is documented.
"Yet Stahl knows nothing about it, or pretends she doesn’t, and instead literally rolled her eyes when the president criticized fake news," Cleveland said. "Trump is right. What the Obama-Biden administration did to him was horrible. But what Stahl and the rest of corporate media have done since then is pretty despicable too: Lying to Americans; ignoring the targeting of the Trump campaign and then the Trump administration; telling the public that there was no spying or that it can’t be 'verified,' which is now also their excuse for ignoring what could prove to be the second biggest scandal in this country’s history."
The Pence interview:
See the Trump interview:
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