Ex-NSA bod sues US govt for 'illegally spying' on Americans: We drill into 'explosive' 'lawsuit'

Friend, do we have a bizarre legal battle for you

On the other hand

But let's be honest here, there may be a degree of truth in this spying accusation. The intelligence services have been lying for years (and in fact just yesterday), often blatantly, about their spying programs. And, we'll be honest, the part of the lawsuit that details how lawyer Larry Klayman saw his phone update itself and then behave peculiarly sounds like exactly the sort of operation that the NSA undertakes.

Montgomery may have a shady past, but his lawyer Klayman – well, he was the guy who brought the NSA to task for its illegal hoovering up of everyone's telephone metadata. This guy, Klayman, wouldn't take on the case unless he was sure something was going on.

Somewhat unusually, Klayman has actually added himself as a plaintiff in the case – but let's ignore that for now and dig into Klayman's pedigree as a Washington, DC, truthseeker, a man unafraid to go where the facts lead him and let no one get in his way.

Ah.

OK, so Larry does seem to have a pretty extensive history. Maybe not in the way you would hope, however.

He was perhaps most prolific during the Clinton administration, when he repeatedly sued the president on behalf on just about every woman who claimed Bill had paid them a little too much attention: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Dolly Kyle Browning.

He also helped create a couple of the "gates" during that time: Filegate, Chinagate – you must remember those gates, right? In fact, at one point, Bill Clinton, during a press conference about his mortgage (remember when presidential scandals were about posh mustard, the color of slacks and mortgage loans?) specifically named – and mocked – Larry Klayman for living in his own world. It's on YouTube.

Osama, huh

But all that came to an end when George W Bush got in and Klayman started suing... Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban. And the government of Iraq. And Dick Cheney's energy task force. And Jacques Chirac. And his own mother (over her deceased mother's nursing bills).

OK, but if there was proof that Klayman is not in it for notoriety but for truth, justice and the American way, it must be when he started up a new company called Freedom Watch – after the fictional company name given to fictional character Larry Claypool in television series The West Wing.

Larry Claypool – not to be confused with Larry Klayman – was portrayed in the series as a partisan hack who constantly filed groundless lawsuits against the Bartlett administration in an effort to find damaging information. He was, on occasion, successful in dredging up embarrassing but ultimately irrelevant information.

In other words, this whole lawsuit claiming a mass conspiracy at the top levels of governments and mass illegal surveillance – including that of Donald Trump by then-President Obama, not forgetting the Deep State – it all looks totally legit. You should follow with interest. ®