The shocking thing about the Russia collusion hoax is not that the intelligence community pushed a hoax to help the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and later to undermine the Trump presidency. The shocking thing is the extent to which the intel community spied on candidate Donald Trump, Trump as the nominee, and eventually Trump as the President of the United States.

There’s now a war going on behind the scenes between the Trump transition team and the intelligence community that the public is not seeing. Trump is ready for their dirty tricks this time around and it is fascinating to watch when you know the full background.

Every time there’s a transition of power, there’s a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the two sides that allows the Cabinet appointees and the outgoing Cabinet members to start engaging with each other. In 2016, Trump signed that MOU with Barack Obama’s team before he had even assembled most of his Cabinet. That came back to bite him.

This time, the MOU that Trump’s team signed with Biden’s team has a minor amendment that has some people in DC scratching their heads. Incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles announced Tuesday that Trump’s team has refused to sign an MOU with the Government Services Administration (GSA).

The fact sheet on the MOU states the following:

“The Transition will not use government buildings or technology provided by GSA and will operate as a self-sufficient organization. The organizational autonomy means a streamlined process that guarantees the Trump Administration is ready on Day 1.”

“The Transition already has existing security and information protections built in, which means we will not require additional government and bureaucratic oversight.”

This is very good news.

When Trump’s team signed the MOU with Obama’s team in 2016, the GSA provided them with offices, laptops, cell phones, and iPads that were all rigged to spy on everyone on the team. There were bugs and cameras set up in the offices and all types of FBI spyware loaded onto the computers and cell phones.

Seven months after President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, all the data, video, and tens of thousands of emails including sensitive or classified information ended up in the hands of Brandon Van Grack. This isn’t speculation. It’s all in the documents from the congressional investigations into the Russiagate hoax.

Brandon Van Grack was serving as Senior Assistant Special Counsel to Robert Mueller at the time. Van Grack admitted to congressional investigators that Mueller’s team of witch hunters had failed to use an “ethical wall” to protect any privileged materials in those tens of thousands of stolen emails.

Mueller’s team did not subpoena those emails as part of the investigation. They just ended up with those emails (and who knows what else) because the Government Services Administration had provided all the computers and cell phones to the Trump transition team a year earlier before Trump even took office.

Those rigged computers and bugged offices were set up a year in advance because the FBI was trying to find anything they could have used to prove that President Trump or members of his team were “puppets of Putin.” If President Trump had used Russian dressing on his salad, they would have used that against him in trying to prove the Russia hoax.

(Luckily for America, Donald Trump never eats salad!)

By not accepting any computers, cell phones, or even offices from the GSA this time around, the Trump team has nullified the ability of the FBI to plant any rigged spying devices on them. The transition team is also conducting its own background checks for appointees using an independent firm, instead of the FBI. They will only start using the FBI for background checks once they are in control of the FBI and running it with their own people.

“Why hasn’t Trump nominated Kash Patel to run the FBI?”

Trump can’t nominate anyone to run the FBI yet, because Director Christopher Wray is technically in the position until his appointed term ends in 2027. Trump can’t announce a replacement for Wray until Wray either retires or Trump fires him on January 20th. That will happen, though.

Trump’s team is not making the same mistakes they made in 2016 with the intel community. We don’t know what they were planning to try to trip up his presidency this time around. But if the camel can’t get its nose in the tent in the first place, the transition team is off to a great start.