OPINION | Ken Pittman: Time For America to See FISA Evidence

The country has had enough. We are deeply divided. We are confused and we are anxious.

The President of the United States is outwardly hated by members of Congress, press and tens of millions of American citizens. He is suspected by many to have accepted help from the adversarial power of Russia to secure his seat in the Oval Office.

The FBI secured wiretaps from a FISA court judge and listened in to many meetings, which evidently included ones at Trump Tower in New York City where he resided. For months, Trump stated that he was being recorded and for months, President Obama laughed it off basically calling him delusional, if not a liar. The media echoed those sentiments until Trump's former campaign adviser, Paul Manafort's case showed evidence of it. It was true, though. Trump knew he was being recorded.

Candidate Trump knew and did nothing about it. He did not change the meeting place for his campaigns to a secure setting. He did not stop a Russian attorney, now claiming to be an informant, from entering into the circle of the campaign, meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. and others, late in the game. These are not actions of an elusive co-conspirator.

So whose information can we trust? Former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page had been under surveillance by the FBI, suspected of being recruited as a Russian agent as far back as 2013, when he met up with a man in Manhattan that he mistakenly believed was a banker. The man was actually a Russian spy.

I am announcing something here: I am accusing the Washington Post of lying to the American people. In an article they printed on February 2, 2018, WaPo reporter Philip Bump stated that Page "came under FBI surveillance after having been added to Trump’s team."

This leads to a series of questions you must ask yourself. Why didn't the FBI warn candidate Donald Trump of Page being compromised and "turned" by Russians if they came to that conclusion? Is it not their job to ensure this kind of activity doesn't foster and grow, in particular up the ladder of a serious candidate to be President of the United States? If FBI Director Comey didn't feel compelled to separate a suspected spy from access to a potential holder of the nation's deepest secrets, when would they ever act?

Also, why would the Washington Post lie about when Carter Page was under the watchful eye of the FBI? They knew damn well he had been under surveillance since 2013 and not only "after having been added" to team Trump.

The FBI not only should have acted, but I suggest that a few things can be brought to light.

Based on vital discoveries made of then-Deputy Director and now fired and disgraced Andrew McCabe (an ally to Hillary Clinton), he was deeply motivated to stop Donald Trump and wanted him to fall into a Russian trap, even if he was unaware. His wife had accepted some $800,000 tied to Hillary Clinton for Mrs. McCabe's campaign.

The money was sent as McCabe ghost-authored Director Comey's written statement exonerating Hillary Clinton under the presumption that she did not mean to break any laws, even thought she saw to it that tens of thousands of emails and documents subpoenaed by Congress, were destroyed. This is worse than Dwight Shrute bringing bagels in to The Office.

The FBI also loaned Agent Peter Strzok to Special Counsel Mueller's team for 45 days in 2017, until revelations surfaced showing Strzok and his lover, Lisa Page, also in the FBI, speaking frankly in text messages about the candidate Donald Trump:

PAGE: God, Trump is loathsome human.

STRZOK: Yet he many win.

STRZOK: Good for Hillary.

PAGE: It is.

STRZOK: Would he be a worse president than Cruz?

PAGE: Trump?, yes I think so

STRZOK: I’m not sure.

STRZOK: Omg he’s an idiot.

PAGE: He’s awful

STRZOK: America will get what the voting public deserves.

PAGE: That’s what I’m afraid of.

Lisa Page resigned from the FBI on Monday. Peter Strzok is still with the FBI, now working in their human resources department...for now.

So the pristine and venerated FBI under Comey has loaded a perfect storm for Trump in knowingly allowing Russian agents into his camp, and then used extremely politically-minded Trump opponents to investigate him, under the guise of providing the investigation neutral Justice Department federal agents.

Mueller's special counsel isn't much better. He took on Strzok for his team, did he not? Also, what kind of a balanced look are they making as they probe President Donald Trump? A list of 17 former prosecutors working on Mueller's counsel team include Hillary Clinton donors Greg Andres, Rush Atkinson, Ryan Dickey, Michael Dreeben, Kyle Freeny, Andrew Goldstein, Adam Jed, Elizabeth Prelogar, James Quarles, Jeannie Rhee, Brandon Van Grack, Andrew Weissmann and Aaron Zelinsky.

Then-CIA Director James Clapper, in March of 2017, while on-air with Meet The Press host Chuck Todd:

TODD: Yeah, I was just going to say, if the F.B.I., for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know?

CLAPPER:  Yes.

TODD:  You would be told this?

CLAPPER:  I would know that.

TODD:  If there was a FISA court order–

CLAPPER:  Yes.

TODD:  –on something like this.

CLAPPER:  Something like this, absolutely.

Now, the same guy, two months later, expanded on his testimony.

Then, during an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on May 14, they had this exchange:

TAPPER: So you did not even know that there was an FBI investigation until Comey testified (on March 20?)

CLAPPER: I did not know. That's right. And that was my first official knowledge of such an investigation, particularly as it addressed potential political conclusion.

CLAPPER: So, the bottom line is, I don't know if there was collusion, political collusion, and I don't know of any evidence to it, so I can't refute it and I can't confirm it.

This is the same James Clapper that lied while under oath when he denied mass surveillance over all Americans. When pressed and with the Eric Snowden evidence in front of him, he stated, "My response was clearly erroneous."

Let that sink in.

It is time. The American people deserve to know what evidence was shown to the FISA court judge, how much of the information has been determined to be erroneous, false, or bogus, and what is the basis of the FISA judge issuing the warrant. We need and deserve to know. Subjective words, true, but with a great argument.

Hearts & Minds

I know many scoff at the idea of any real communist agenda nowadays, but there are estimations believed to to be in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars coming from Venezuela, Cuba, and if you can believe it, to a lesser extent, also China and Russia, annually to fuel the fires of division and dissent. Working class vs wealthy, black vs white, liberal vs conservative. Ultimately, this agenda is not domestic.

Look at the way even mainstream famous liberals have depicted their idea of patriotic Americans. Basically, they see Trump voters as blindly racist, uneducated fools being fed lies by capitalist corporations who don't care about them in the least. They are funding hatred of American history, publishing revised history, omitting much of what makes America great through the writings of subversive communist professors and authors outside of academia.

I wanted to know how much propaganda money was coming in and from where, so I turned to an old friend for an educated guess--noted expert, Communist insurgency watchdog and former Communist, David Horowitz. David believes that the vast sums of money enters the nation in thousands of small transactions, which the government here cannot detect without specific surveillance of the funds or the individuals focused on at least one side of the transactions.

I just finished my interview of Horowitz as I began writing this.

One of the great examples of this propaganda to turn young Americans is a book popular on the left called "The People's History of The United States", pushed by liberal educators and administrators and even Hollywood in movies such as Good Will Hunting, "coincidentally" starring Matt Damon who, according to Damon, grew up with the author Howard Zinn as a life long family friend. Zinn, born in 1922 to Russian and Ukrainian immigrant parents.

His writings and teaching show an almost diametrical opposition to the United States. Zinn denied that he was a communist but was described by black scholars and friends of his, August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, who write in Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980, that Zinn was “an active Communist party member for almost a decade.”

Zinn's FBI file is quite large. They interviewed him as far back as 1949, when J. Edgar Hoover directed a strong focus on him. While he denied being a Communist, the FBI report quotes multiple informants as saying that Zinn told them all he went to as many as five Communist party meetings a week while in Brooklyn, when he resided there.

Yet, Zinn is celebrated, if not venerated, by the Hollywood elite. His book has been decimated even by his own colleagues at Harvard. It has been called horribly simplistic and overly objective. He has been caught fudging numbers and concocting facts he could not possibly have collected. It does not stop though, for example a PBS series based on his work, featuring narrators like Sean Penn, Pink and Eddie Vedder. Many colleges require students to purchase Zinn's book, and even public school systems use the book for required reading.

If you're not familiar with the content, even you are the dyed in-the-wool patriot, by the time you are halfway through The People's History of The United States, you'll find yourself shaking a fist at Old Glory and cheering for the British during the American Revolution, Hitler and the Japanese Forces in World War II, and especially the Soviet Union as you read about the Cold War.

Zinn even somehow has the United States responsible for the many sins of the thrones of Europe colonizing the Americas and every unjust act, atrocity committed against the native Indians (and there were many) and about every immoral event post 1491. Of course these events took place well before the birth of Governor Bradford of Massachusetts who helped to found Plymouth Colony, never mind the birth of the nation.

The United States, the subject of Zinn's book can only be held responsible for things post 1776.

The mission of Communist agents in the teachings ranks is simple: to create a bridge between leftist and more moderate students, in order to try to radicalize some of the more moderate and liberal students to challenge our political system. They also seek to stir up violent dissent between minorities and the government.

Antifa, #theresistance, as well as other far left college groups are outwardly calling for a violent end to the United States. Earlier last week, the birthday of Karl Marx was recognized and celebrated by Communists in America. Our children are on the opposite side of the ideological war as our parents, and we are financing the education they are getting in order for this to happen.

Does life copy art, or does art copy life? If you watched Homeland over the last two years, they do a pretty good job of showing how propaganda works on all sides.

We are in a serious war for the hearts and minds of our own countrymen. We need patriots to be informed and get involved.

Otherwise, we're screwed.

Ken Pittman is the host of The Ken Pittman Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Contact him at talkerkenpittman@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @RadioKenPittman. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.