Former NSA head Mike Rogers talking with Durham about the spying on the Trump campaign

Washington Examiner:
The former director of the National Security Agency is the latest to sit down with U.S. Attorney John Durham in the widening inquiry into the origins and conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Adm. Mike Rogers, who retired in 2018 after four years as NSA chief and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, has met with Durham, who is working at the behest of Attorney General William Barr, multiple times and is cooperating voluntarily in Durham's deep dive into the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation related to the Trump campaign and the Russian government, according to the Intercept. Rogers is likely being talked to because of his key intelligence perch, experiences uncovering Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violations, and his role in the intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference.
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In 2016, Rogers helped expose FISA flaws of a different kind by the NSA and the FBI. That October, as the bureau received its first Page surveillance warrant, Rogers notified the FISA Court of an NSA inspector general report that found the agency was pulling data directly from the internet and improperly searching it for information related to Americans in violation of FISA laws dealing with foreigners outside the United States targeted by U.S. intelligence agencies.

A FISA Court ruling from April 2017 revealed the high volume of violations, and that month the NSA announced it ended all searches where the foreign intelligence target was neither the sender nor receiver of a communication but was mentioned within it.

"That in doing this we were going to lose some intelligence value, but my concern was I just felt it was important — we needed to be able to show that we are fully compliant with the law," Rogers told the Senate in 2017.

The same FISA Court ruling stated that, by early 2016, the DOJ learned the FBI gave contractors access to massive amounts of FISA information well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI requests. Another recently declassified October 2018 FISA Court ruling stemming from the court's inquiry into these FISA abuses found the bureau violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Horowitz's report also detailed how Rogers and the NSA viewed Steele's dossier with skepticism, pushing back against efforts by then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to include information from it in the high-profile January 2017 assessment on Russian election interference put together by the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA.
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Former US Attorney says this is important:
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... DiGenova said, “For more than four years before the election of Donald Trump, there was an illegal spying operation going on by FBI [private] contractors — four of them — to steal personal information, electronic information about Americans and to use it against the Republican Party.”

In a Christmas Eve interview with WMAL radio station (audio below), diGenova explains how the FBI’s efforts to cover up the 702 spying brought us “Crossfire Hurricane.” Rogers discovered it and reported it to the FISA Court and said “she” stopped it (I assume “she” refers to FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer). DiGenova says it led to the “crescendo of activity by Comey, Clapper, and Brennan. It led to the so-called Crossfire Hurricane investigation to cover-up the previous spying that had been going on.”

Rogers has an electronic trail of all the spying that went on over five years. He has personal notes – like Jim Comey – only this time they are not self-serving notes, they are the truth…I have described Mike Rogers as the Rosetta Stone of this investigation…I can be fairly confident now in saying there will be a substantial criminal conspiracy indictment against a lot of people with the electronic spying.

That electronic spying that went on from 2012 through 2016 into NSA databases was used for unmasking people and then leaking that information to the press.

DiGenova is asked if this includes the unmaskings that involved Susan Rice and Loretta Lynch and he says yes.

Next, he directs our attention to the famous press conference given by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in March 2017, while serving as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes, whose efforts to expose the corruption have been monumental, was widely criticized after this presser. DiGenova explains what Nunes had just seen at the NSC prior to meeting with reporters. What he saw…

were spreadsheets which had been produced by the White House of the intercepts, the illegal NSA intercepts, and on it were the names of people, telephone numbers, to and from information, which led to the unmaskings. That’s what this is all about. It is truly remarkable that we have finally gotten here.

(Note: Nunes discussed this day in detail in an interview with Dan Bongino which aired on Tuesday. The audio is available here.)

They discuss the significance of the Obama White House using these intercepts, which are meant to be used to thwart terrorist attacks, against their opponents for political purposes. DiGenova calls it a stunning scandal of immense proportions that is being ignored by the Washington Post and the New York Times. He wants everyone to be aware of the April 2018 ruling by Judge Collyer about the spying by FBI contractors....
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This appears to be closing in on the Obama administration and probably goes all the way to the top.   Hopefully, those responsible for it will be brought to justice.

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