But it appears some people in the government were working against him. It appears that way more and more. And it's not just an issue of James Comey (though Ray McGovern does a strong job making the case that Comey was attempting to threaten Trump).
Patrick Martin (WSWS) reports:
A front-page article published Saturday in the New York Times revealing that the FBI secretly opened a counterintelligence investigation into President Donald Trump after he fired FBI Director James Comey has laid bare a massive police state conspiracy by the US intelligence agencies.
The Times published the article in an effort to revive the anti-Russia campaign against Trump, promoting the unsubstantiated and highly dubious claim that Trump is a Russian agent. The facts presented in the Times report are, in reality, far more damning of the FBI than of Trump.
Despite the newspaper’s intentions, the picture painted by the Times of the FBI is alarming. The Times depicts a highly politicized intelligence agency whose officials carefully monitor the activities of the two main capitalist parties, keeping a vigilant eye out for any deviations from the national security consensus in Washington.
The Times claims that Trump “had caught the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.” Given that this was a sarcastic campaign remark directed against Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and delivered at a public news conference, Trump’s sally can hardly be construed as evidence of a conspiracy.
The Times article goes on to describe how FBI officials monitored the platform adopted at the Republican National Convention, reporting that the spy agency “watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.” That is, the nation’s top police agency was concerned that the positions adopted contravened certain basic tenets of dominant sections of the foreign policy establishment.
By what constitutional authority can the FBI, based on political positions adopted by one or the other of the two main capitalist parties, open up a secret investigation into treason and conspiracy? Such an operation bespeaks a police state and recalls the methods of the Stalinist NKVD.
Is that how a democracy works? No, it isn't.
Andrew McCarthy (FOX NEWS) explains:
The investigation commenced during the 2016 campaign by the Obama administration – the Justice Department and the FBI – was always about Donald Trump.
We have to remember: The FBI believed the Steele dossier – the collection of faux intelligence reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was ultimately working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Justice Department on four occasions brought surveillance applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in which the FBI swore that it believed the dossier allegations.
Ostensibly, the surveillance application targeted Carter Page. But Page was just a side issue. The dossier was principally about Trump – not Page, not Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or other Trump associates referred to by Steele. The dossier’s main allegation was that Trump was in an espionage conspiracy with Russia to swing the election to Trump, after which Trump would do Putin’s bidding from the White House. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department could not verify the dossier, but they undeniably believed it.
Moon of Alabama (INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE) zooms in even more:
The NYT claim that the counter-intelligence investigation was initiated because of reasonable suspicion of Russian influence over Trump is nonsense. It was initiated to get access to a set of tools that would allow unlimited access to communication of Trump and anyone related to him. It was Obama who on his way out of the door gave the FBI these capabilities.
There are signs that the unlimited access the FBI and Mueller investigation have to signal intelligence is used to create prosecutions via 'parallel construction':
The Hoarse Whisperer @HoarseWisperer - 18:50 utc - 12 Jan 2019 An active counterintel investigation means the Trump Administration’s crimes were only as secure as the weakest link in their weakest moment. We got hints of this early. Our intelligence folks picked up “signals intelligence” or SigInt from Russians talking to Russians.The 'crime' that di Flynn in was misremembering a phone call he had with the Russian ambassador. Similar happened with Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s righthand man and a member of Trump’s transition team. Then it happened to Paul Manafort himself and to George Papadopoulos.
Those “signals” aren’t the kind of evidence that finds its way into a courtroom. In fact, it’s important that it doesn’t. It would burn sources and methods. It lays out the crimes and the players though... and then prosecutors find ways to make triable cases other ways.
The public sees cases for specific charges carrying significant prison time without ever knowing that the NSA and prosecutors knew so much more than they ever revealed. Now, apply those principles to the cases we’ve seen Mueller bring forward so far.
Mike Flynn: pleaded out to a minor charge, rolled over in full and then produced five rounds of documents. Likely: Flynn was confronted with the intel they had on him and knew he was cooked. They knew the crimes. They heard and saw everything. There’d be no escape.
By flipping and pleading out Flynn, all of that secret intel stays secret. Our intelligence efforts are protected. And Flynn goes down. And he cooks a bunch of other gooses. He’s savvy enough to know that once they have the intel, all that’s left to do is make the case.
...
The Mueller investigation, thanks to the snooping Obama and the FBI enabled, knows the content of every phonecall, chat and email any member of the Trump administration made and make to someone abroad (and likely also within the U.S.). It invites people as witnesses and asks them about the content of a specific calls they made. If they misremember or lie - bang - Mueller has the transcript ready. A crime has been created and an indictment for lying to the FBI will follow. This is what happened to Flynn and the others the Mueller investigation entrapped and convicted.
Because of the counter-intelligence investigation the anti-Trump gang in the FBI hastened to initiate, the investigators got hands on signal intelligence - phone calls, chats and emails - that allowed them to indict minor people for petty crimes and to flip them to talk to the investigation.
The aim, in the end, was and is to build a prosecution case against President Trump for whatever minor and petty half-backed illegal doing there may be.
They knew what they were doing -- the FBI, Barack Obama, all of them.
This isn't fun and games. This is serious. This is the sort of conspiracy that can lead to public hangings -- we mean real hangings, we're not speaking figuratively.
This was wrong, it was unconstitutional, it was against democracy and it is a forever stain on Barack Obama's presidency. History will not look kindly on this -- nor should it.
Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova (FOX NEWS) address some of the legal aspects:
The New York Times story was created to obfuscate the real criminal conspiracy: violation of Title 18 of U.S. Code Section 242, which prohibits any person under color of law (i.e. Obama administration personnel) to deprive another of “rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution.” Such legal protection includes being free from a criminal investigation based on false charges.
Perhaps the bizarre January 20, 2017 email Susan Rice wrote “to herself” purporting to document a January 5, 2017 meeting with President Obama, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director Comey and Vice President Joe Biden, gives a clue as to some of those conspirators. The meeting discussed the Steele dossier and Russian collusion, but curiously Rice stressed that the former president said every aspect should be handled “by the book.” Yet, Strzok had told his FBI colleague and paramour Lisa Page not to worry about Trump being elected because “We’ll stop it.”
The brazen plot against President Trump by the Obama-era FBI and DOJ continues, enabled by a complicit media. The odor of corruption has long been noxious. But the Democrats and media hold their collective noses. The criminal clique, via the New York Times, has announced to the world, “Catch me if you can.”
It's time the ones hunting Donald Trump were forced to explain their actions.