The Patriot Post® · Obama's Spying

During the waning years of the Bush administration, the nation went through a series of intense debates about the proper balance between terrorist surveillance in a post-9/11 world and our constitutional liberties. In this debate, then-Senator Barack Obama was clearly against the Patriot Act and the tools the Bush White House had used to defend our homeland. Consider these statements:

“Americans fought a revolution in part over the right to be free from unreasonable searches — to ensure that our government could not come knocking in the middle of the night for no reason. We need to find a way forward to make sure we can stop terrorists while protecting the privacy and liberty of innocent Americans.” —Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), 2006

“That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime… No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.” —Sen. Barack Obama, 2007

When President Barack Obama reversed course and supported the reauthorization of Bush-era surveillance programs in 2011, people on the Left felt betrayed. They thought Obama was going to shut them down. Many on the Right applauded the president for doing the right thing for our security.

Well, sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Here’s another theory as to why Obama suddenly shifted course and supported programs he once attacked: He realized the power those programs gave him to monitor political opponents.

We know he did it during the debate on the Iranian nuclear deal and during the 2016 campaign. Now there are new reports demonstrating the extent to which the Obama administration abused our national security programs.

In 2011, the secret FISA court warned the Obama administration after finding that so-called “safeguards” in the surveillance programs were “statutorily and constitutionally deficient.” The court ordered significant changes, but the Obama administration ignored them.

Five years later, FISA court judges blasted the Obama administration for an “institutional lack of candor” and “very serious Fourth Amendment issues.”

How bad was it? According to an inspector general’s report, more than five percent of NSA’s Section 702 searches violated privacy safeguards.

This is a huge Obama scandal that demands a massive investigation. So of course big media completely ignored it.

Another Obama Scandal

One of the main reasons that conservatives have demanded tougher border security — including a wall — is that we don’t know who is coming into the country or why they are attempting to sneak in illegally. Yes, many come here looking for work and a better life. But certainly not all of them.

Incredibly, however, an investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee finds that the Obama administration knowingly released at least 16 MS-13 gang members into various communities throughout the United States.

These thugs came into the country during the 2014 border surge of unaccompanied minor children. They “freely admitted” to being members of the brutal gang MS-13 and one even told federal authorities that he “was a drug dealer” and “would continue to do the same in the United States with his family.”

Some of these gang members were sent to a facility near Suffolk County, New York. Over the past 16 months, there has been a spike in murders in Suffolk County and MS-13 gang members are responsible for 38% of them.