A journalist known best for publishing "The Twitter Files" and his work chronicling the Occupy Wall Street protests claimed in a new Substack report he was privy to evidence of an Obama-era "political espionage" campaign not unlike the one its purported target Donald Trump long suspected.
Matt Taibbi, who published the report with fellow Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger and reporter Alex Gutentag, further told Fox News the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion had the same hallmarks of the Bush-era Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) claims.
On "Jesse Watters Primetime," host Jesse Watters covered the contents of the report extensively, reporting Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan asked English-speaking U.S. allies to target the Trump campaign in 2016 and that foreign intelligence services were offered a list of 26 Trumpworld figures who could be "bumped" or encountered by intelligence assets.
Watters surmised one such individual was likely George Papadopoulos, a former campaign staffer who later pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators amid a probe in which he was approached while abroad by operatives who offered "dirt" on Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
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"Foreign spies didn't 'discover' evidence of Trump-Russia collusion and turn it over to the feds. Foreign spies were ‘assigned’ by Obama's CIA to create a false impression of collusion; to trigger an FBI counterintelligence investigation. Obama's CIA worked with Hillary's foreign agents in London to hatch the hoax, which led to the FBI investigation, the illegal wiretapping, the [Gen.] Mike Flynn sting...," Watters reported.
The report claimed the U.S. intelligence community asked the "Five Eyes" intel consortium – the Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders – to "surveil Trump associates and share intelligence they acquired with U.S agencies."
Information about the alleged cooperation reportedly lies in a 10-inch binder in Langley, Va., home to the CIA's headquarters, according to Taibbi, who added that if true, espionage and election-related laws were then broken.
Taibbi told Watters that the scope of former U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham's special counsel investigation was limited and did not expand in that particular direction.
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"The information that we have, the investigation that was conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: what they found was a broad political espionage campaign," he said.
Taibbi summarized the findings of his report as twofold: at least 26 Trump-linked individuals were "improperly and without predication, placed under surveillance in the election year 2016" and that intel alleging a Russian interference plot in cahoots with the Trump campaign were unfounded.
"It's a WMD-style story: They suppressed dissenting opinions and created a false narrative," he said. (Allegations arose during George W. Bush's administration that oppositional claims questioning whether then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had such weapons were widely ridiculed and suppressed.)
However, Taibbi said he would like to confirm additional information on the purported "binder" residing in Northern Virginia, while reporting there is also a report into the origins of the intel community's assessment that "never left a vault [in] Langley."
"That's like a 17-to-20-page report that was confirmed by multiple sources. Apart from that, we were told there are numerous other investigative materials that may or may not be these binders that stories are referring to…," Taibbi said.
This led Watters to conclude the report to be another reason why the Washington bureaucracy fears a second Trump presidency.
"Because, he'll blow the lid off that," Jesse Watters quipped.
The host also alluded to a combative interview Trump sat for with "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl where the Republican pushed back on the CBS journalist's dismissiveness toward allegations of "spying on [his] campaign."
On Wednesday evening, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley also reacted to Taibbi's report, noting that Papadopoulos and Carter Page, who was later targeted under FISA statute, were announced as part of then-candidate Trump's foreign policy team.
"FISA is not supposed to be used to target First Amendment activities; political activities," he said.
"But even going outside of FISA to target U.S. citizens and use surrogates to do it would raise very significant legal and policy questions. It would also contradict things that have been made."
