Limbaugh: Obama 'Weaponized' America's Spies Against Trump's Team

Limbaugh: Obama ‘Weaponized’ America’s Spies Against Trump’s Team

"It’s becoming increasingly clear..."By Jack Davis
on April 3, 2017 at 4:43pm

Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Monday boiled down the complex web of surveillance stories regarding the Trump team into one simple concept: the Obama administration declared a very secret war on President Donald Trump using America’s intelligence services as his weapon.
Trump first alerted America to the surveillance issue when he tweeted on March 4 that he was “wiretapped” by former President Barack Obama. Trump’s claims were initially met with denials. However, it was reported on Monday that Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, played a heretofore-unannounced role by “unmasking” the identities of Trump associates whose communications were incidental by-products of the surveillance.
Limbaugh said that this latest detail reveals a conspiracy of epic proportions.
“But the real scandal here — and it’s becoming increasingly clear — is that the Obama administration weaponized politically our intelligence services against the Republicans and against Trump. I, for one, am not surprised,” he said.
“We know that the Obama Regime surveilled Trump’s transition team. We know now that the Obama White House unmasked people who were not targets of legitimate surveillance and investigation. We know now that the Obama White House illegal leaked protected information,” he said.

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Limbaugh said that mainstream media outlets were used as well to share the few choice tidbits from leakers burrowed in the Obama and Trump administrations.
“The Drive-By Media reported all of this. We know that there had to be unmasking. We know that there had to be leaking. The media proudly told us that sources who could not be identified […] fed them data. We know now that the media was complicit,” he said.
Limbaugh said that because rules forbid direct surveillance without proof that did not exist, the Obama administration found a novel way to indirectly eavesdrop on the Trump team.
” … the Obama administration chose surveillance targets knowing that they would be talking to specific Americans, wanting to see what those specific Americans were talking about. So while they couldn’t get a FISA warrant to target Americans, they purposely targeted for surveillance foreign actors that they knew Trump transition people would be talking to and learned what they were saying that way. And that’s why Rice was requesting that these people be unmasked so that she and Obama and whoever else in this operation would understand who was being talked about and who was saying what,” Limbaugh said.
” … we now know that Trump has been surveilled for a year. We now know that the Obama administration was responsible for the unmasking. We now know that it was Susan Rice, who lied on five Sunday shows about Benghazi, we know that it was Susan Rice who requested the unmasking of all of these Trump officials,” he said.
Limbaugh was emphatic that the scandal to focus upon has nothing to do with Russia.
“This story is not Trump and the Russians. I’m sorry to be so repetitive. The story is the surveillance that the Obama administration was engaging in of Trump and who knows who else. Now, you say, ‘Rush, this is awfully hard to believe.’ No, it isn’t. This is my point about liberals and who they are. They weaponized the IRS against conservatives, didn’t they? They most certainly did,” he said.
He also noted that because Obama loyalists had tapes of call former national security adviser Michael Flynn made to Russian officials, they know what was said.
“If Flynn had indeed promised anything about lifting sanctions once Trump was inaugurated, they (would) have reported that by now. It is clear that Flynn did not do anything actionable because all they’ve been able to do is leak supposition and create mystery about it. But they’ve known all along that nothing happened! They’ve known all along that Flynn didn’t do anything illegal in his conversation with the Russian ambassador. So the leaks have been intended to create suspicion rather than allay it,” he said.