Whistleblower's
lawyer: Comey 'falsely' denied evidence of surveillance
Asks congressional committee if it will investigate
evidence of widespread spying
The lawyer who founded Judicial Watch and later Freedom Watch, Larry Klayman, has
sent a letter to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, asking him to look at a whistleblower’s evidence of
“systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, again including the
chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent
businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly.”
That spying was done, Klayman’s letter contends, by the
FBI.
It’s become a major issue following President Trump’s
assertion that he and Trump Tower were spied upon by the federal government,
and the subsequent denials by intelligence and law-enforcement officials, including
FBI
Director
James Comey,
who famously cleared Hillary Clinton on
accusations she mishandled classified information as secretary of state.
Klayman has been working with Dennis Montgomery, a former
NSA and Central Intelligence Agency contractor who “left the NSA and CIA with
47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which is
classified.”
Montgomery then “sought to come forward legally as a
whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional
intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years
in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans.”
Explained Klayman: “Working side by side with former
Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied in congressional
testimony, and former Obama Director of the CIA, the equally ethically
challenged John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed ‘up close and personal’ this
“Orwellian Big Brother’ intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion,
blackmail or other nefarious purposes.”
But he said the testimony has been essentially ignored.
Now, however, with the issue pending before Congress,
there even are media reports that appear to substantiate the general claims
that the government has been spying. The New York Times in January referenced
wiretapping at Trump Tower, and just this week ABC News documented
that the FBI monitored Trump Tower.
The report claimed, “But it was not placed at the behest
of Barack Obama, and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016. For two
years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a
sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated
out of unit 63A in Trump Tower in New York.”
It resulted in the indictments of more than 30 people,
ABC said.
Explained the report: “The FBI investigation did not
implicate Trump. But Trump Tower was under close watch. Some of the Russian
mafia figures worked out of unit 63A in the iconic skyscraper – just three
floors below Trump’s penthouse residence – running what prosecutors called an
‘international money-laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring.'”
Klayman, a Washington watchdog who repeatedly took on the
Clinton political machine to investigate suspicion of wrongdoing, explained in
his letter to Nunes, which was copied to other members of Congress, that he
previously won a judgment from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon preliminarily
halting the “illegal, warrantless, and massive surveillance of U.S.
citiznes and lawful residents” in 2015.
As part of Nunes’ hearing on claims of government spying,
he invited “anyone who has information about these topics to come forward.”
Klayman said that is exactly what Montgomery has done.
“There is a myriad of evidence, direct and
circumstantial, of the illegal and unconstitutional surveillance disclosed to
the FBI by Montgomery,” said Klayman, describing how his client made an
on-camera interview with the agency about the misdeeds some time ago.
He said Montgomery “holds much of the roadmap to
‘draining the swamp’ of this corruption of our democracy.”
Montgomery, Klayman said, has information “that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans.”
During Montgomery’s interview with FBI General Counsel James Baker,
under grants of immunity, he “laid out how persons like then businessman Donald
Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of
the Obama
administration.”
“He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated
voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, where illegal
tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.”
But that interview, “conducted and videotaped by Special
FBI Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett, occurred almost two years ago,
and nothing that I know of has happened since.”
Klayman wrote that it appears to have been “buried” by
Comey, possibly because “the FBI itself collaborates with the spy agencies
to conduct illegal surveillance.”
He said he previously visited with a staff lawyer,
Allen Souza, to inform Nunes of questions that needed to be put to Comey while
under oath.
“My expressed purpose: to have Chairman Nunes of the
House Intelligence Committee ask Comey, under oath, why he and his FBI have
seemingly not moved forward with the Montgomery investigation while, on the
other hand, the FBI director recently claimed publicly, I believe falsely, that
there is ‘no evidence’ of surveillance on President Trump and those around him
by the Obama administration.
“Indeed, there is,” he wrote.
He tells members of Congress that Comey needs to be
grilled during a subsequent hearing, now set for March 28. He asks Nunes to
respond by March 24 to let “the American people, and Mr. Montgomery … know
where you and the other members of your committee stand.”
“Do you intend to get at and investigate the full truth,
or as has regrettably been the case for many years in government, sweep the
truth under the carpet?”
Other recipients of the letter were Reps. Adam Schiff,
Mike Conaway, Peter King, Frank LoBiondo, Tom Rooney, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
Michael Turner, Brad Wenstrup, Chris Stewart, Rich Crawford, Trey Gowdy, Elise
Stefanik, Will Hurd, Jim Hines, Terri Sewell, Andre Carson, Jackie Speier, Mike
Quigley, Eric Swalwell, Joaquin Castro and Denny Heck.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham
Clinton was the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration, and a director at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Note: Open
Society Foundations was a funder for the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the Atlantic Council of the United States
(think tank), and the Human Rights
Watch.
George
Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, was the chairman for the Foundation to
Promote Open Society, and a benefactor for the Human Rights Watch.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Human Rights Watch, and the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
John J.
Studzinski is a director at the Atlantic
Council of the United States (think tank), a director at the Human Rights Watch, and was a co-head
of investment banking for HSBC Holdings
plc.
HSBC Holdings
plc was a funder for the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
James B. Comey
was a director at HSBC Holdings plc,
and is the director at the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Andrew McCabe is
a deputy director for the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI), and oversaw FBI email investigation of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Robert S.
Mueller III was a director at the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
Cameron F. Kerry
was an associate at Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr, is John F.
Kerry’s brother, a fellow at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP.
John
F. Kerry is Cameron F. Kerry’s
brother, and was the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration.
Hillary Rodham
Clinton was the secretary at the U.S.
Department of State for the Barack
Obama administration, and a director at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Cyrus F.
Freidheim Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
Commercial Club of Chicago, Members Directory A-Z (Past
Research)
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Robert S. Osborne
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, and was an EVP & general counsel for Booz Allen Hamilton.
Booz Allen
Hamilton was a funder for the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
James R. Clapper
was an executive director, military intelligence programs for Booz Allen Hamilton, and the national
intelligence director for the Barack
Obama administration.
R. Eden Martin is
the president of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Newton N. Minow
is a member of the Commercial Club of
Chicago, and a senior counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Cameron F. Kerry
is a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP,
John F. Kerry’s brother, a fellow at
the Brookings Institution (think tank),
and was an associate at Wilmer Cutler
Pickering Hale and Dorr.
Robert S.
Mueller III is a partner at Wilmer
Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and was a director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
James B. Comey is
the director at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), and was a director at HSBC Holdings plc.
HSBC Holdings
plc was a funder for the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Hillary Rodham
Clinton was a director at the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and the secretary at the U.S. Department of State for the Barack Obama administration.
John J.
Studzinski was a co-head of investment banking for HSBC Holdings plc, is a director at the Human Rights Watch, and a director at the Atlantic Council of the United States (think tank).
James A. Baker III
is an honorary director at the Atlantic
Council of the United States (think tank), a senior partner at Baker Botts, and was the secretary for
the U.S. Department of State.
Frances
Fragos Townsend is director at the Atlantic
Council of the United States (think tank), and was a partner at Baker Botts.
John J.
Studzinski is a director at the Atlantic
Council of the United States (think tank), a director at the Human Rights Watch, and was a co-head
of investment banking for HSBC Holdings
plc.
HSBC Holdings
plc was a funder for the Bill,
Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
James B. Comey
was a director at HSBC Holdings plc,
and is the director at the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
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