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Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ plot to wiretap Trump Tower

President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election.

Citing no evidence to support his explosive allegation, Trump said in a series of five tweets sent Saturday morning that Obama was “wire tapping” his New York offices before the election in a move he compared to McCarthyism. “Bad (or sick) guy!” he said of his predecessor, adding that the surveillance resulted in “nothing found.”

Trump offered no citations nor did he point to any credible news report to back up his accusation, but he may have been referring to commentary on Breitbart and conservative talk radio suggesting that Obama and his administration used “police state” tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team. The Breitbart story, published Friday, has been circulating among Trump's senior staff, according to a White House official who described it as a useful catalogue of the Obama administration's activities.[ In their bizarro alternative universe, stories published in Breitbart represent "a useful catalogue" ]

A spokesman for Obama did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Trump has been feuding with the intelligence community since before he took office, convinced that career officers as well as holdovers from the Obama administration have been trying to sabotage his presidency. He has ordered internal inquiries to find who leaked sensitive information regarding communications during the campaign between Russian officials and his campaign associates and allies, including ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Some current and former intelligence officials cast doubt on Trump's assertion.

"It's highly unlikely there was a wiretap," said one former senior intelligence official familiar with surveillance law who spoke candidly on the condition of anonymity. The former official continued: "It seems unthinkable. If that were the case by some chance, that means that a federal judge would have found that there was either probable cause that he had committed a crime or was an agent of a foreign power."[so, not "Nixon/Watergate"]

A wiretap cannot be directed at a U.S. facility, the official said, without finding probable cause that the phone lines or Internet addresses were being used by agents of a foreign power — or by someone spying for or acting on behalf of a foreign government. "You can't just go around and tap buildings," the official said.

Trump sent the tweets from Palm Beach, Fla., where he is vacationing this weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago estate. It has long been his practice to stir up new controversies to deflect attention from a damaging news cycle, such as the one in recent days about Sessions and Russia.

Trump's tweets took numerous top White House aides by surprise, according to a second White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Saturday was expected to be a "down day, pretty quiet," this official said, and there was little, if any, attempt to coordinate the president's message on the wiretapping allegations.

Trump sent the tweets from Palm Beach, Fla., where he is vacationing this weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago estate.

I don't think His Incompetency has yet to spend an entire weekend on the job in DC.

Lord Jim wrote:(it may work for a news cycle, )

Does Trump ever sleep? He acts manic all day and then in the middle of the night he kicks into manic overdrive.

He finally looked like he might know how to act presidential in his speech to congress. Now he's gone back to being himself.

He needs medication.

Conservative media pushed wiretapping claims before Trump did

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President Trump’s string of tweets Saturday morning accusing President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign came seemingly out of nowhere: It wasn’t something the president had been discussing recently, nor had it appeared in major mainstream news outlets.

But Mr. Trump’s tweets weren’t the first time this allegation has been made: Several conservative media outlets have been pushing wiretapping claims in recent days.

A spokesman for Mr. Obama responded to the allegation in a statement on Saturday afternoon.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” spokesman Kevin Lewis said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) nor the Justice Department has confirmed or commented on whether Trump Tower was under government surveillance. However, some conservative media outlets have been pushing these claims in recent days, which may be where Mr. Trump got his information.

“It’s only really appeared in a few publications, most of the major mainstream news organizations have not been able to confirm this either,” CBS News’ Paula Reid said Saturday on CBSN, noting that the claim has “picked up steam with conservative media over the past few days.”

On his show Thursday, conservative radio host Mark Levin said Mr. Obama was “using powers of the federal government to surveil members of the Trump campaign.” He alleged that the FBI was looking into a Trump Tower server for ties between Mr. Trump’s business empire and Russian banks -- which he said the Obama administration used to snoop on Mr. Trump.

“Today’s reporting on Sessions having a chance meeting with the ambassador – where did that information come from?” Levin asked, referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his newly disclosed meetings with Russia’s ambassador last year. “Look at the timing of it. Was Obama surveilling top Trump campaign officials during the election?”

“This is a silent coup,” he said.

And on Friday, the conservative media site Breitbart News, which has close ties to Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, wrote its own piece about the alleged wiretapping. The Breitbart story was based on Levin’s show and also used the conservative site Heat Street as a reference for some of its facts.

BoSoxGal wrote:I predicted within 5 tweets of his speech he'd be full-on bonkers again; how close was I?

If the Feds Did Wiretap Trump Tower, It’s Not Obama Who Should Worry

It started, like so many eruptions these days, with a tweet.

Early Saturday morning, President Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing, without evidence, former President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in the month before the election. Trump compared the alleged snooping to “Nixon/Watergate,” and intimated legal action.

What makes the broader allegation so extraordinary isn’t that it is new. Quite the contrary. Various reports that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted Justice Department investigators a warrant to probe the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia surfaced in November. What makes Trump’s Twitter tirade so striking is what prompted it, and what it might imply if it’s true.

Anatomy of an Allegation

Baffling as it may be, it appears Trump’s accusation stems from a recent article published on Breitbart, the conservative news outlet formerly run by White House senior adviser Stephen Bannon.

“This is a somewhat stunning, in so far as the president of the United States doesn’t need to get his information about classified activity from Breitbart,” [But he prefers to; this is a guy who has said he considers The National Inquirer a legitimate news organization.] says Cato Institute fellow Julian Sanchez.

That story, “Mark Levin to Congress: Investigate Obama’s ‘Silent Coup’ Vs. Trump,” rehashes comments the titular conservative radio host made Thursday equating the previously reported FISA warrant with a “police state,” and accuses Obama of a politically motivated, covert attempt to undermine Trump and his associates.

It’s unclear just what prompted Levin’s rant, or why Trump glommed onto it. Although no one has confirmed a FISA investigation, or wiretaps in Trump Tower, several news outlets have reported the former’s existence. The most detailed account thus far, from the BBC in January, provided a timeline: The Justice Department sought a FISA warrant in June to intercept communications from two Russian banks suspected of facilitating donations to the Trump campaign. The judge reportedly rejected the warrant, as well as a narrower version sought in July. A new judge granted the order in mid-October, according to the BBC.

None of this necessarily makes Trump’s allegations true. Even if a FISA warrant exists, it does not mean Trump Tower is tapped or that Trump specifically is the target. Further complicating things, the existence of a wiretap would not necessarily confirm the existence of a FISA warrant. Almost half of the building’s 58 floors are dedicated to commercial and office space, and any one of them—not to mention the building’s residents—could be the target of an investigation unrelated to international espionage or election tampering.[That possibility occurred to me as well. There could have been a wiretap at "Trump Tower" that had absolutely nothing to do with Trump.]

“If he has evidence that he was wiretapped without a proper FISA order being sought, that would be a huge scandal, and he should produce whatever evidence he’s got,” says Sanchez. “It’s a pretty serious claim, and it’s striking [but not at all surprising]he would make it without anything solid to back it up.”

Republican Senator Ben Sasse called on the president to clarify his claims, stating that “we are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust.” Obama spokesperson Kevin Lewis strongly denied extra-judicial surveillance of any US citizens to Politico in response to the claims..

Look past the president’s conspiracy theories, though, and one fact stands out: However strongly Trump feels that he’s right, he’d better hope he’s wrong.

Tower of FISA

If nothing else, Trump’s tweets show he doesn’t understand how the FISA system works. If he did, he may have limited himself to tweeting about Arnold Schwartzenegger quitting The Apprentice this morning.

“While the order would have been requested by some part of the executive branch, Obama can’t order anything. Nor can Trump,” [You mean Trump is talking about something he's completely ignorant about? Do tell....]says former NSA lawyer April Doss, who stresses that her comments are based only on public information. “The order has to come from the court, and the court operates independently.”

FISA court judges serve seven-year appointments, so the court’s composition doesn’t ebb and flow with the political tides. What’s more, specific laws adopted in the wake of Watergate prevent the very activity Trump accuses Obama of.

“You can’t tap the phones of a political candidate for political purposes,” says Doss.

What you could tap them for? Acting as a foreign power, or as an agent of a foreign power. In other words, spying against US interests with both knowledge and intent.


Clearing that bar is difficult, by design. FISA warrants don’t allow for broad wiretaps of, say, every call going in and out of a specific office in a 58-story Manhattan skyscraper. Federal authorities must demonstrate not just probable cause, but that a given phone line serves primarily to undermine US interests. It’s difficult, for instance, to obtain a warrant to wiretap a shared office, for fear of picking up innocent third-party conversations.

“I have high confidence that a FISA court judge would not have authorized any warrant unless it met all the requirements under the statute,” says Doss.

Trump’s wiretap claims, then, carry presumably inadvertent implications. First, based on previous reporting and the nature of FISA courts, any wiretaps within Trump Tower would be legal. And they would stem from overwhelming evidence that the Trump campaign, or someone within it, has unsavory ties to Russia or another foreign power. Otherwise, it’s unlikely those wiretaps would exist at all.

If federal authorities did have cause to listen in on Trump Tower, though, and they provided enough evidence for a FISA court to approve the snooping, Obama is not the one who ought to worry.

Trump wants congressional probe of claims on Obama, won't comment further

President Trump called Sunday for a congressional investigation of his claims that predecessor Barack Obama had him wiretapped during last year's election — while critics accused Trump of trying to distract people from an investigation into his own relationship with Russia.

"Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement a day after Trump accused Obama — without evidence — of having Trump Tower wiretapped in connection with an investigation of Russia.

Trump is "requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016," Spicer said,[I've got absolutely no problem with that; if the committee finds a FISA wiretap, they can make the evidence that was presented to obtain it public. If there isn't one they can officially expose Trump for lying about it.]

While Trump repeatedly tweeted about Obama during the weekend, Spicer's statement said "neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted."[because now that he's tossed the lie out, he doesn't want to be held accountable for it]

A spokesman for Obama said Trump's claim is false, and noted that presidents do not have the legal authority to authorize wiretaps in any case.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump is making false claims against Obama in order to distract attention from investigations into possible contacts among Trump, his associates, and Russians involved in a plan to hack Democratic officials during last year's election.

Again calling for an outside investigation into Trump and Russia, Pelosi told CNN's State of the Union: "What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?"

Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.