It was never a mistake. It was never a misunderstanding. It was a plan. CIA Director John Brennan allegedly handed foreign allies a list of 26 Trump associates to “bump” into. Not investigate. Not watch. Bump. Intelligence engineered casual encounters to trigger surveillance. link
The Five Eyes alliance, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, was asked to monitor Trumpworld figures and feed intelligence back to American agencies. This is not cooperation. This is weaponized oversight. Taibbi calls it “a political espionage campaign.” Literally. link
“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.”
Assignment. Manipulation. Deliberate framing. Oversight was abandoned. Intent replaced law.
The parallels to the WMD scandal are precise.
“The Steele dossier was never verified, yet it was used to justify FISA warrants, media leaks, and a counterintelligence probe that shaped the entire 2016 election.” link
A dossier built on whispers justified raids, surveillance, leaks, and the distortion of an election. The FBI, the CIA, the press, all instruments of a narrative fabricated for political effect. Opposition research became operational strategy.
The consequences are still unfolding. The Durham report confirmed Clinton’s campaign seeded the Russia narrative. Taibbi exposes the next layer: the intelligence services did not merely amplify lies. They created them. They orchestrated encounters to manufacture the illusion of collusion.
Look at the verbs. Assigned. Bump. False impression. They are not passive. They are evidence of intent. They describe betrayal. They describe the use of state power against domestic political actors.
No one asks what laws were broken. No one demands access to the ten inch binder allegedly in Langley with names, dates, instructions. Silence is consent. Silence is complicity.
What happens next if intelligence agencies can target political campaigns and evade consequences? If dossiers replace ballots, if leaks replace oversight? Electoral sovereignty becomes theater. Democracy becomes theater.
This is not about Trump. This is about power. This is about precedent. This is about intelligence systems retooled to manipulate politics in plain sight without tanks, without ballots, only dossiers, only leaks, only silence.
