Who gave the order to spy on the Trump campaign?

James Robbins:

President Trump is ordering the Justice Department formally to examine whether the Obama administration used the FBI to attempt a political hit on his 2016 campaign. It’s about time.

On Sunday the president tweeted that he will instruct the DOJ to investigate whether the FBI/DOJ “infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for political purposes.” The last three words are key, because we already know the Trump campaign was under FBI "surveillance." Only the motive and who gave the orders remains a mystery.

Remember the umbrage in March 2017 when the president said that he had been “wiretapped” before the election? Then-FBI Director James Comey testified he had had “no information” to support that idea, and he had “looked carefully inside the FBI." Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said there was no surveillance, and as DNI he would have known about a court order on "something like this." PolitiFact labeled the claim 100% false.

What a difference a year makes. Recent revelations of the extent of the anti-Trump surveillance activity have forced Trump critics to adopt a new narrative. Clapper now says spying on the campaign was actually a good thing. The New York Times took issue with the term “spying,” saying rather that it was simply an “investigation.” This dickering over terms is reminiscent of when former Attorney General Loretta Lynch insisted the “investigation” into Hillary Clinton’s home-brew email server be called a “matter.”

Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa wrote in the Washington Post that the spying was in fact for Trump’s protection, which he would understand if he knew the first thing about the art of counter-intelligence. But if the FBI was trying to shield the Trump campaign from evil Russkies, why not inform the candidate up front both to warn him and to allay any potential misunderstandings? The New York Times helpfully answers that the FBI was protecting the integrity of the election by keeping the spying under wraps — and in fact if any campaign was hurt it was Hillary Clinton’s.

This flurry of revisionist interpretations comes prior to the expected release of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which could contain criminal referrals. The IG is also looking into how the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to begin its spying campaign on an unnamed Trump aide. Shortly after the president’s tweet on Sunday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked the Inspector General to expand this investigation to include “whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation.”

The FBI and Justice Department could help matters at this point with radical transparency, releasing all the information about every aspect of what they dubbed Operation Crossfire Hurricane. But at every turn the DOJ has raised national security objections to revealing practically anything important. This is harmful to the DOJ and the country. The department leadership needs to understand that a considerable number of Americans believe that the DOJ itself has become a national security threat.
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My chief suspect in ordering the spying is Barack Obama.  I find it hard to believe it would have happened without his authorization.  I think the motive was to get dirt that would hurt the Trump campaign.  In the end, it was an unsuccessful operation because Trump was not colluding.  If he were we would have seen indictments by Mueller by now.

BTW, the anti-Trumpers have tried to parse the word spy and instead use the word informant.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as :

1. A person employed by a government or other organization to secretly obtain information on an enemy or competitor.

1.1 A person who keeps watch on others secretly.

I think this guy who was handsomely paid by the government was a spy by this definition.