“A POLITICAL-OPPOSITION RESEARCH PROJECT”
by Sharon Rondeau
(May 9, 2019) — In a May 6 six-down interview with Judicial Watch host Bruce Schlesman, investigative journalist John Solomon, who, in tandem with fellow investigative reporter Sara A. Carter, has been breaking new ground in the Russia “collusion” narrative and its aftermath for more than two years, recounted an evening in March 2017 when he said he was approached unsolicited by two federal agents outside of his Washington, DC-area home.
Solomon said that his “Russia” investigation, which has recently broadened to include alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Democrats, stemmed from a scathing report, formally titled a “Memorandum Opinion and Order,” issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) addressing admissions of improper unmasking of Americans’ names by the Obama regime. Solomon told Schlesman that at the time, the unmaskings appeared to him, at least in part, to have a connection to the 2016 presidential election.
On July 25, 2017, Solomon wrote in a column for The Hill, where he is now executive vice president for video:
The National Security Agency and FBI violated specific civil liberty protections during the Obama administration by improperly searching and disseminating raw intelligence on Americans or failing to promptly delete unauthorized intercepts, according to newly declassified memos that provide some of the richest detail to date on the spy agencies’ ability to obey their own rules.
The memos reviewed by The Hill were publicly released on July 11 through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union.
They detail specific violations that the NSA or FBI disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or the Justice Department’s national security division during President Obama’s tenure between 2009 and 2016. The intelligence community isn’t due to report on compliance issues for 2017, the first year under the Trump administration, until next spring.
In February, Solomon related the story, perhaps for the first time, to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and “Citizens United” President David Bossie, an informal Trump advisor, on their “Rough Rider” radio show.
He arrived home at approximately 11:00 PM that night, Solomon said, after an appearance on the “Hannity” show in which he discussed his findings and what would become a two-year ongoing series revealing a politically-motivated attempt by the U.S. intelligence community to undermine the Trump campaign and, having failed that, to cripple the former businessman’s presidency.
“You’re on the cusp of something much bigger…” Solomon quoted the agents as having told him that night. “What we can tell you is that if you dig far enough, you will find that the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI, NSA, were used to carry out a political-opposition research project during the 2016 election. We’re deeply troubled by that; it’s inappropriate; there are violations yet to be discovered, and more importantly, the reason we want to come and tell you and hope you can report this out is that if we lose these tools because we’re caught using them for politics, we might not catch the next terrorist; we might not catch the next big spy; it deeply concerns us to see what happened…”
Solomon told Schlesman that after the agents departed, he immediately went inside and documented what he recalled of the conversation and sent it to Carter. Both were then working at Circa News.
From there, Solomon said, he and Carter began asking questions as to who the perpetrators and targets might have been, and the Russia “collusion” narrative began to unfold.
Of the two unnamed agents, Solomon said, “I look back at their words that I memorialized that night, and they were very, very accurate. They understood what was going on.”