Lee Smith on 'Spygate': "It Was A Larger Political Operation To Dirty The Trump Campaign"

Real Clear Investigations' Lee Smith tells FOX News host Laura Ingraham said there was a press campaign by Obama administration intelligence officials to dirty Donald Trump's bid for the presidency. From the Friday edition of FNC's Ingraham Angle:





LAURA INGRAHAM: Well John Solomon discovered that the FBI violated its own rules by using informants before the investigation was ever launched. So why were FBI informants contacting Trump figures about Russia long before the Russia probe was opened? Something else that doesn't add up, whether a key player was an FBI informant or somewhere closer to a Russian spy. Reporter Lee Smith wrote an important piece on that in real clear investigations entitled, "The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate". Lee is here to discuss how Russiagate all began...



We are going to get into this Misfud character with another oddity in all of this but what about the timing of this investigation like process can get really boring, what does it matter but it matters here why?







LEE SMITH, REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS: Well I think because the FBI supposedly officially opened up the investigation July 31st and we are seeing a lot of other things, a lot of dates seems to predate July 31st. and one of the things that I have been looking at in fact, it's not just the investigation, but also looking there was a press campaign as well. And the press campaign preceded July 31st by at least a month.



INGRAHAM: Explain what you mean, a press campaign?



SMITH: I mean if we are looking at, this is the way the Obama administration typically works, they did it with the Iran deal. There was always an intelligence component and there was always a press campaign as well. That's how the Obama administration worked. These two things happened, they were political operations. I think that what happened here, I think that we're making a little bit of a mistake by looking simply at the spying part of this so when [former DNI James] Clapper and [former CIA director John] Brennan get on TV and they say spying is the highest form of patriotism I think that we are paying a little too much attention to the spying. There is a larger political operation to dirty the Trump campaign.