Fox News reported late Friday that Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion suggesting that Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and some associated attorneys paid a tech research group to monitor internet traffic into and out of Trump Tower in New York City. And according to Durham's filing, that "infiltration" continued post-election to monitor internet traffic associated with the Executive Office of the President of the United States.
Former President Donald Trump reacted on Twitter, describing it as "a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate"; and arguing that it provides "indisputable evidence" that both his campaign and his presidency were "spied on by operatives paid by [the Clinton campaign] in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia."
Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), weighed in on the matter Tuesday morning on American Family Radio. He described as a "dastardly attempt" to prevent Trump from becoming president.
"That was the first goal: to pervert an election; to use the tech airwaves and everything else to lie about Trump so that he couldn't get enough votes and Hillary [Clinton] would be the president," Schlapp argued.
"And then after they lost [the election, they tried] to try to bring his presidency down and say it was illegitimate," he continued. "Remember, they never accepted the outcome – even though when we bring up the voter irregularities in 2020, we are called 'proponents of the big lie.'"
The ACU chair is convinced the spying went deep into the Trump administration – and maybe was going on the entire time Trump was in office.
"I think there was a giant, perhaps the largest violation of civil rights that we've seen in modern times – violation of our political civil rights [and] our ability to have our political views," he added.
Related developments …
Late yesterday, Fox News reported that attorneys for Michael Sussmann – the former Clinton campaign attorney facing charges related to the origins of the Trump-Russia probe – demanded that the "factual background" section of Durham's filing be stricken by the court. Their argument: that section will "taint the jury pool" for their client's upcoming trial.
AFN reported on Tuesday that the major broadcast networks – and many liberal news websites – appear to be going out of their way to avoid reporting on the Durham filing. A spokesman for Media Research Center pointed out that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News sat on the story over the weekend, but did find time to report on a possible doping scandal at the Winter Olympics in China.
