Donald Trump seems to have completely lost his mind this morning, what little was left of it, basically buying into the recent right-wing media claim that there is some type of "Obama-in-exile" coup going on and ripping on Arnold again. This is what we call projection and a cornered rat. Let's rethink that "Presidential" speech the other night. Let's also dispense with his politics for a second. Donald Trump is a loose cannon, seems very likely to be mentally ill, and people in a position to do so should be looking at how to invoke the 25th Amendment in an emergency. Martin Sheen from "The Dead Zone" is President.
Presidents can't order wiretaps. IF Trump Tower was wired, it would be because one of the intelligence agencies got a FISA order. Donald Trump, if this is true, is basically admitting the intelligence community had enough probable cause to wiretap his phones. But who the hell knows, because he is getting this story directly from Breitbart via Mark Levin's radio show.
Again, if anything nefarious happened, Donald Trump will surely be caught because he's a goddamn idiot. He doesn't even get what's going on because his ego sends him into a blind rage in which he says whatever comes to his mind.
You don't have to believe the "liberal media" or "hysterical liberals". All you have to do is listen to Trump himself. He has either revealed himself as an Alex Jones-level conspiracy theorist, or he has inadvertently declassified a wiretapping investigation into himself because he is THAT DAMN STUPID. There is no option C.
Can't believe people thought that guys presidential even for a second. That's how incredibly low the bar has been set for this guy.
When Hillary (and the rest of us) said this guy doesn't have the temperament to be President, THIS is what she was talking about. 70-year old sociopathic narcissists are not curable.
Keep in mind the Obama spokesman IS NOT saying there was no wiretapping, it's making clear that he and the White House did not order it.
It's also now being reported that at the end of the week Trump was furious that Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russia and the campaign, and it's becoming more and more apparent why. He expected Sessions to be his bulwark against the flood that he knows is coming. That bulwark is gone. Trump KNOWS the intelligence community has the goods on him. The fact is that many people know it, and have known it for months upon months. It's all simply either been highly classified among very few people or journalists haven't been able to source most of it well enough at this point to go to press. Again, just watch....it's coming. Many found it curious how calm and collected Obama acted during the transition to someone who had so disparaged him and was surely set to undo almost all of his legacy. It's starting to make alot more sense. Turns out revenge is a dish best served cold.
@smeagolheart: The organization's statement is dated January 20th, but the government order was made the day before, on the 19th. Articles about events usually don't go online the same day as the event itself.
@smeagolheart: The organization's statement is dated January 20th, but the government order was made the day before, on the 19th. Articles about events usually don't go online the same day as the event itself.
quibbling. So someone from Trump's transition team on the 19th told them to prepare this statement and publish it on inauguration day.
@jjstraka34 Do you think Obama is seeking revenge on Trump? I hope not, that would certainly lower my opinion of him.
Not literally, no. It's been reported over the last week that the Obama Administration began to see the depths of the Russian collusion in the months after the election. Administration officials in many departments basically started leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in any legal way possible so that the incoming Administration could not simply erase the evidence from existence.
Obama didn't (and didn't have the power to) order an investigation of Trump specifically. As has been made clear, this couldn't have taken place without a FISA warrant, and you can't get a FISA warrant on an American citizen, much less a Presidential candidate, without some serious shit going down. Obama has no power to effect this anymore, and never really did. I'm simply saying he probably is one of the few people who knows what is actually coming down the pike, and his relatively calm and accepting demeanor of this whole shit show may be partially because he knows it isn't going to last long.
There would be no way for Obama to be directing anything at this point. I believe former Presidents can get a daily intelligence briefing if they choose to, but most do not. This paranoia that Trump has about Obama essentially running some sort of rebel shadow government is lunacy. For the first two weeks after he was out of office he was windsurfing with Richard Branson. I'm simply saying Obama is likely privy to alot of the dirt that is coming out, and he's more than patient enough to let this take it's inevitable course.
Even erasing all the noise, everyone can ask themselves one basic question: Is Donald Trump acting like someone who is innocent, or someone who has a great deal to hide??
The amount of purposeful deflection and inadvertent projection going on in the tweetstorm this morning is so blatant it's astounding. He brings up Watergate because he is about to be caught in the biggest scandal since. And he brings up McCarthyism, which is perhaps even richer, as it is well known that one of Trump's biggest mentors was the loathsome Roy Cohen, who was perhaps more responsible for McCarthyism than Joe McCarthy himself.
@smeagolheart: The organization's statement is dated January 20th, but the government order was made the day before, on the 19th. Articles about events usually don't go online the same day as the event itself.
quibbling. So someone from Trump's transition team on the 19th told them to prepare this statement and publish it on inauguration day.
This is not true. Trump's transition team did not prepare this statement. It came from a non-profit agency with absolutely no ties to the Trump team.
The order was not Trump's doing, or the work of his staff, because Trump wasn't in office yet.
The statement was not Trump's doing, or the work of his staff, because they're not the ones who made the statement.
At no point was Trump involved in this incredibly tiny matter.
We should be clear: although the Democratic party has been suggesting certain members of Trump's team have unusually strong ties to Russia, the intelligence community has yet to accuse any officials of inappropriate relations with Russia. So far, we have little concrete proof of Russian loyalties.
The intelligence community did say, however, that the Russians attempted to influence the results of the 2016 election. As I discussed in detail twice before in this thread, the intelligence community has already published multiples sources of information supporting their consensus on Russian interference in the election. I am referring to the unclassified evidence; not the classified evidence.
So there are two different ideas, one of which is well-grounded and one of which is speculative:
- There is no solid proof of Russian loyalties in Trump's staff--just meetings, whose content is not yet public, that were strangely kept quiet.
- There is solid proof of Russian interference in the election. That doesn't necessarily mean Russia successfully gained real influence in American politics.
I am, of course, speaking of the former claim. Other countries try to gain influence in elections all the time, Israel especially, and some may disagree but I think it's pretty clear those were also the motives of Saudi Arabia and other major Clinton Foundation funders with human rights records that make you question their charitable motives. It would be naive to think countries don't do that.
No, we don't have the details.....yet. But I can surmise what I personally THINK is going on here, and it comes down to exactly what you'd think it would.....money. Lots and lots of money.
Trump's persona as a great businessman and even as a billionaire are both, essentially, myths. He couldn't produce a billion dollars in liquid assets if his life depended on it. His total failures and bankruptcies in Atlantic City had reached the point where American banks were no longer loaning him money, and indeed, he owed some of them 100s of millions of dollars. He had to turn elsewhere for capital.
As someone who built his reputation in the late 70s and 80s New York Real Estate world, there is no way that Donald Trump didn't come into contact with the shadiest figures in organized crime. It would have been an impossibility. So we know with very little doubt that he is willing to do business with the most loathsome people imaginable. While the business dealings themselves are byzantine, the crux of the matter is this: Russian banks and oligarchs have been propping up Donald Trump financially for years. If they are, that means Putin is by default, as no large amounts of money move around in Russia without him knowing or receiving a taste. His dealings there became so vast that once he started to run for President, he was immediately subject to being blackmailed. Enter Manafort as Campaign Manager. Carter Page as an advisor. Flynn as his National Security voice. I won't go so far as to call them handlers, but it's damn close. I don't know what kind of quid pro quo has gone on up to this point, but I'm almost certain the first part of it was changing the language of the RNC platform backing off criticizing Russia for the situation in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.
This is why Trump didn't release his tax returns. OF COURSE he is hiding something in them, or they would have been presented to the public. This is why his closest advisers have not just been "keeeping quiet" (as @semiticgod points out) about their meetings, but they are actively lying about them on a nearly daily basis, even though there seems to be no earthly reason to do so. You don't keep your tax returns secret if there isn't something you want hidden. You certainly don't lie for no reason, and MULTIPLE people don't lie about the SAME thing for no reason.
Again, there are reports (unconfirmed, but alot of what is coming out NOW was dismissed as unconfirmed and conspiratorial a few months ago, in this very thread) that many parts of the much-maligned dossier are starting to check out. John McCain is thinking about calling the British MI-6 agent who compiled it in front of Congress (though no one actually knows where he is because he went into hiding). Trump himself clearly feels he has to do pre-emptive strike by trying to lay the blame on what comes out in the future on any number of things: leaks, the Intelligence Community, Obama, Hillary, and basically whoever he can think of that isn't him. Trump (according to ABC News) was absolutely livid in a meeting with Preibus and Bannon when he found out Sessions had recused himself. The issue of Russia, more than any other, sends him into these unhinged fits. Trump is scared of one thing, and it's clear by his behavior. He's scared of the constant focus on his Russian ties. He knows what's there, and it's clear by his behavior this morning that he thinks other people now know what's there. I suspect by the end of the year we'll ALL know what's there, and that it will likely be the biggest political scandal in American history. That's simply my take on the situation. Of course none of this is proven yet. But a hell of alot of stuff HAS come to light in the past few weeks that was laughed off by critics of the Russian angle months ago. This stuff has been out there on the fringes since the summer. It's to reporter's credit that they haven't gone with alot of it because they can't prove it yet. But the pieces come together day by day. My suspicion and prediction is that it will continue to happen until the big shoe drops, and then all hell is going to break loose.
Allegations of improper wire-tapping and the Obama Administration is incredibly complex.
Under Obama, the powers of the NSA were expanded to such a degree unprecedented (even over the Patriot Act and Bush), and we know from Snowden the NSA will go so far as to create back doors in popular and absolutely necessary encryption algorithms in daily use today, to allow them the ability to breach anything.
Furthermore there have been many incidents in the past of improper surveillance under Obama, such as intercepting Angela Merkel's communication which caused an international incident, to secretly obtaining Associated Press' phone records.
The problem is that because Obama approved the wide expansion and surveillance of the NSA he is by default implicated in every incident of improper breach of privacy.
Further complicating this whole thing, Is that the Obama administration twice requested FISA to wiretap Trump.
This was not widely reported in the media, so we need more investigation to understand the whole thing before jumping to conclusion.
Allegations of improper wire-tapping and the Obama Administration is incredibly complex.
Under Obama, the powers of the NSA were expanded to such a degree unprecedented (even over the Patriot Act and Bush), and we know from Snowden the NSA will go so far as to create back doors in popular and absolutely necessary encryption algorithms in daily use today, to allow them the ability to breach anything.
Furthermore there have been many incidents in the past of improper surveillance under Obama, such as intercepting Angela Merkel's communication which caused an international incident, to secretly obtaining Associated Press' phone records.
The problem is that because Obama approved the wide expansion and surveillance of the NSA he is by default implicated in every incident of improper breach of privacy.
Obama could not order a wiretap. End of story. You can talk all you want about how the Deep State has evolved, but Obama could not direct the intelligence agencies to wiretap Donald Trump.
There are only two possible ways to look at what Donald Trump said this morning: he is either a.) nuts or b.) he just revealed that he was the target of a investigation that would have REQUIRED a FISA court to sign off on it.
The Administration didn't ask. The FBI did. If a FISA warrant was issued, it came as the result of an FBI investigation, NOT from the White House. What you are saying is wholly inaccurate. And the FISA Court does not wiretap. They grant the requests for the authorization.
Obama could not order a wiretap. End of story. You can talk all you want about how the Deep State has evolved, but Obama could not direct the intelligence agencies to wiretap Donald Trump.
There are only two possible ways to look at what Donald Trump said this morning: he is either a.) nuts or b.) he just revealed that he was the target of a investigation that would have REQUIRED a FISA court to sign off on it.
Obama could not order a wiretap. End of story. You can talk all you want about how the Deep State has evolved, but Obama could not direct the intelligence agencies to wiretap Donald Trump.
There are only two possible ways to look at what Donald Trump said this morning: he is either a.) nuts or b.) he just revealed that he was the target of a investigation that would have REQUIRED a FISA court to sign off on it.
We know his Administration did request it twice of FISA.
Wrong. It was the FBI. Saying "the Administration" asked for the FISA request is wholly misleading, purposefully misleading. It makes it sound like the request came out of the West Wing. Those requests came from the FBI. Period.
And everyone reading this knows that Trump was trying to make it seem like Obama PERSONALLY targeted and signed off on this. Which everyone reading this also knows is a total load of horseshit.
@jjstraka34 , I truly hope you're wrong. As bad as Trump is, Pence would be much worse.
@vanatos , by what stretch of the imagination is it improper to tap a foreign leader's phone? Unlike tapping Americans' phones, that just comes under the heading of the NSA doing its job. And if the Germans don't have teams trying to tap Trump's phone, then the head of German intelligence needs to be fired for dereliction of duty.
@vanatos , by what stretch of the imagination is it improper to tap a foreign leader's phone? Unlike tapping Americans' phones, that just comes under the heading of the NSA doing its job. And if the Germans don't have teams trying to tap Trump's phone, then the head of German intelligence needs to be fired for dereliction of duty.
The same reason why it is unethical to tap a private citizen's phone, on top of all the ethical issue's arising from listening in on private conversations of foreign leaders and being able to abuse the data gained from it.
We already have historical incidents showing what happens when this power is abused, by past Communist regimes.
Furthermore, it by default causes international incidents of breaches of sovereignty if the NSA starts breaching the phones of other countries.
It is not 'more acceptable' to tap a foreign phone, it is less acceptable, because American agencies can only ever have any authority over...American matters, not reach across to other nations.
Maybe some of the skeptics can explain why the White House Counsel's office is apparently looking to squash an investigation they don't even know exists yet:
Realize that this is the kind of stuff that brought Nixon down. Paranoia and using the Office of the Presidency to try dismantle an ongoing investigation.
As i pointed out before, wire-tapping, and surveillance is general is an extremely complicated issue not helped by the expansion of the NSA under Obama and Bush.
Here is a very interesting write-up of the complexities under strictly legal terms. There is so much complexity, so i try to quote the specific legal parts and important bolded.
What crimes could have been committed? Ironically, for Democrats falsely accusing Attorney General Sessions, perjury and conspiracy to commit perjury, as well as intentional violations of FISA. Rather shockingly, no law current forbids misusing the power of the Presidency to spy on one’s adversaries. What the law does forbid is lying to any judicial officer to obtain any means of surveillance. What the law does forbid, under criminal penalty, is the misuse of FISA. Both derive from the protections of the Fourth Amendment itself. Under section 1809, FISA makes it a crime for anyone to either “engage in” electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA without following the law’s restrictions, or “disclose” or “use” information gathered from it in contravention of the statute’s sharp constrictions.
FISA, 50 USC 1801, et seq., is a very limited method of obtaining surveillance authority. The reason for its strict limits is that FISA evades the regular federal court process, by not allowing regularly, Constitutionally appointed federal judges and their magistrates to authorize surveillance the Fourth Amendment would otherwise forbid. Instead, the Chief Justice handpicks the FISA court members, who have shown an exceptional deference to the executive branch. This is because FISA court members trust the government is only bringing them surveillance about pending terror attacks or “grave hostile” war-like attacks, as the FISA statute limits itself to. Thus, a FISA application can only be used in very limited circumstances.
FISA can only be used for “foreign intelligence information.” Now that sounds broad, but is in fact very limited under the law. The only “foreign intelligence information” allowed as a basis for surveillance is information necessary to protect the United States against actual or potential “grave” “hostile” attack, war-like sabotage or international terror. Second, it can only be used to eavesdrop on conversations where the parties to the conversation are a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. An agent of a foreign power cannot be a United States person unless they are knowingly involved in criminal espionage. No warrant is allowed on that person unless a FISA court finds probable cause the United States person is knowingly engaged in criminal espionage. Even then, if it involves a United States person, special steps must be taken to “minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of non publicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons.”
This includes procedures that require they never identify the person, or the conversation, being surveilled, to the public where that information is not evidence of a particular crime. Third, the kind of information sought concerns solely information about a pending or actual attack on the country. That is why the law limits itself to sabotage incidents involving war, not any form or kind of “sabotage,” explicitly limiting itself to those acts identified in section 105 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
First, it is not apparent FISA could ever be invoked. Second, it is possible Obama’s team may have perjured themselves before the FISA court by withholding material information essential to the FISA court’s willingness to permit the government surveillance. Third, it could be that Obama’s team illegally disseminated and disclosed FISA information in direct violation of the statute precisely prohibiting such dissemination and disclosure. FISA prohibits, under criminal penalty, Obama’s team from doing any of the three.
At the outset, the NSA should have never been involved in a domestic US election. Investigating the election, or any hacking of the DNC or the phishing of Podesta’s emails, would not be a FISA matter. It does not fit the definition of war sabotage or a “grave” “hostile” war-like attack on the United States, as constrictively covered by FISA. It is your run-of-the-mill hacking case covered by existing United States laws that require use of the regular departments of the FBI, Department of Justice, and Constitutionally Senate-appointed federal district court judges, and their appointed magistrates, not secretive, deferential FISA courts.
This raises the second problem: Obama’s team submission of an affidavit to to the FISA court. An application for a warrant of any kind requires an affidavit, and that affidavit may not omit material factors. A fact is “material” if it could have the possible impact of impacting the judicial officer deciding whether to authorize the warrant. Such affidavits are the most carefully drawn up, reviewed, and approved affidavits of law enforcement in our system precisely because they must be fully-disclosing, forthcoming, and include any information a judge must know to decide whether to allow our government to spy on its own. My assumption would be that intelligence officials were trying to investigate hacking of DNC which is not even a FISA covered crime, so therefore serious questions arise about what Obama administration attorneys said to the FISA court to even consider the application. If the claim was “financial ties” to Russia, then Obama knew he had no basis to use FISA at all.
Since Trump was the obvious target, the alleged failure to disclose his name in the second application could be a serious and severe violation of the obligation to disclose all material facts. Lastly, given the later behavior, it is evident any promise in the affidavit to protect the surveilled information from ever being sourced or disseminated was a false promise, intended to induce the illicit surveillance. This is criminalized both by federal perjury statutes, conspiracy statutes, and the FISA criminal laws themselves.
That raises the third problem: it seems the FISA-compelled protocols for precluding the dissemination of the information were violated, and that Obama’s team issued orders to achieve precisely what the law forbids, if published reports are true about the administration sharing the surveilled information far-and-wide to promote unlawful leaks to the press. This, too, would be its own crime, as it brings back the ghost of Hillary’s emails — by definition, FISA information is strictly confidential or it’s information that never should have been gathered. FISA strictly segregates its surveilled information into two categories: highly confidential information of the most serious of crimes involving foreign acts of war; or, if not that, then information that should never have been gathered, should be immediately deleted, and never sourced nor disseminated. It cannot be both.
Recognizing this information did not fit FISA meant having to delete it and destroy it. According to published reports, Obama’s team did the opposite: order it preserved, ordered the NSA to search it, keep it, and share it; and then Obama’s Attorney General issued an order to allow broader sharing of information and, according to the New York Times, Obama aides acted to label the Trump information at a lower level of classification for massive-level sharing of the information. The problem for Obama is simple — if it could fit a lower level of classification, then it had to be deleted and destroyed, not disseminated and distributed, under crystal clear FISA law. -http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/yes-obama-could-be-prosecuted-if-involved-with-illegal-surveillance/
As i stress before, this is an incredibly complicated matter and we shouldn't jump to conclusions so early on.
I'll say this again: FISA warrants are specifically for FBI and CIA surveillance. They are not a cudgel of the Oval Office. The entire article is premised on the idea that Obama can order a wiretap FISA request. He can't. It's BS.
The author can dress up 50 pages of fancy legalize to top it off, but the entire premise of his article is based on the falsehood that Obama has the power to do this. He DOES NOT.
This sums it up. Because on top of everything else, he fundamentally does NOT UNDERSTAND how government is structured and functions. And his tweets this morning were him making a bet his base doesn't either. On that note, at least, he's probably right on the money.
There are circumstances where the President can authorize it without order.
Furthermore you presume no foul play involved, The logic does not follow that even if it were illegal, therefore no illegal activity was committed, that would be pretty silly.
That is why we need to wait and see before jumping to conclusions.
And if you believe CIA and FBI have never been involved with Presidents initiatives in clandestine ways, i urge you to look at American history that will show you this is quite false.
This narrative forming on the right that Obama is somehow now actually suspected of something he didn't even have the power to do because Donald Trump pulled a series of tweets out of his ass isn't even something I'm willing to debate. If Trump is taken seriously on that point, there is literally NOTHING he can say that his supporters or defenders will not believe or talk themselves into.
For the last time. The FISA courts are for the FBI and CIA. They are set up SPECIFICALLY to prevent the Executive Branch from ordering or requesting them directly. Furthermore, it has already been established in this case that both of these requests came from the FBI. No serious reporting disputes this.
Now Corey Lewandowski has gone on FOX News and has also accused Obama of bugging Jeff Session's office. Jesus jumped up Christ. Maybe Obama also kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and killed Nicole Brown Simpson.
The new line on the right, as of tonight, is forming. It isn't "lock her up", it's now "lock him up". From Breitbart, to Trump, to the Party line in 12 hours. This is how fascists and their followers operate.
So why did the FBI feel it was necessary to get a warrant to monitor Trump tower? It must have been actionable intelligence suggesting that a foreign agent was in communication with Trump's people.
This is a pointless exercise. If Trump got on Twitter and said Obama was actually a cyborg sent to Earth by a genocidal race of aliens from the moons of Neptune, we'd apparently have to entertain that idea as well.
Unfortunately under the Obama administration there have been so many notable breaches of conduct that these allegations have to be taken seriously and elaborated on.
The IRS targeting republicans scandal for example.
As i said, it doesn't help that the powers of the NSA and FISA are so secretive and abused.
Comments
Presidents can't order wiretaps. IF Trump Tower was wired, it would be because one of the intelligence agencies got a FISA order. Donald Trump, if this is true, is basically admitting the intelligence community had enough probable cause to wiretap his phones. But who the hell knows, because he is getting this story directly from Breitbart via Mark Levin's radio show.
Again, if anything nefarious happened, Donald Trump will surely be caught because he's a goddamn idiot. He doesn't even get what's going on because his ego sends him into a blind rage in which he says whatever comes to his mind.
This sums it up:
You don't have to believe the "liberal media" or "hysterical liberals". All you have to do is listen to Trump himself. He has either revealed himself as an Alex Jones-level conspiracy theorist, or he has inadvertently declassified a wiretapping investigation into himself because he is THAT DAMN STUPID. There is no option C.
This tweet made my morning:
Also,
he is clearly trying to distract us from the Sessions scandal by changing the narrative.
Keep in mind the Obama spokesman IS NOT saying there was no wiretapping, it's making clear that he and the White House did not order it.
It's also now being reported that at the end of the week Trump was furious that Sessions recused himself from investigations into Russia and the campaign, and it's becoming more and more apparent why. He expected Sessions to be his bulwark against the flood that he knows is coming. That bulwark is gone. Trump KNOWS the intelligence community has the goods on him. The fact is that many people know it, and have known it for months upon months. It's all simply either been highly classified among very few people or journalists haven't been able to source most of it well enough at this point to go to press. Again, just watch....it's coming. Many found it curious how calm and collected Obama acted during the transition to someone who had so disparaged him and was surely set to undo almost all of his legacy. It's starting to make alot more sense. Turns out revenge is a dish best served cold.
Obama didn't (and didn't have the power to) order an investigation of Trump specifically. As has been made clear, this couldn't have taken place without a FISA warrant, and you can't get a FISA warrant on an American citizen, much less a Presidential candidate, without some serious shit going down. Obama has no power to effect this anymore, and never really did. I'm simply saying he probably is one of the few people who knows what is actually coming down the pike, and his relatively calm and accepting demeanor of this whole shit show may be partially because he knows it isn't going to last long.
There would be no way for Obama to be directing anything at this point. I believe former Presidents can get a daily intelligence briefing if they choose to, but most do not. This paranoia that Trump has about Obama essentially running some sort of rebel shadow government is lunacy. For the first two weeks after he was out of office he was windsurfing with Richard Branson. I'm simply saying Obama is likely privy to alot of the dirt that is coming out, and he's more than patient enough to let this take it's inevitable course.
Even erasing all the noise, everyone can ask themselves one basic question: Is Donald Trump acting like someone who is innocent, or someone who has a great deal to hide??
The amount of purposeful deflection and inadvertent projection going on in the tweetstorm this morning is so blatant it's astounding. He brings up Watergate because he is about to be caught in the biggest scandal since. And he brings up McCarthyism, which is perhaps even richer, as it is well known that one of Trump's biggest mentors was the loathsome Roy Cohen, who was perhaps more responsible for McCarthyism than Joe McCarthy himself.
The order was not Trump's doing, or the work of his staff, because Trump wasn't in office yet.
The statement was not Trump's doing, or the work of his staff, because they're not the ones who made the statement.
At no point was Trump involved in this incredibly tiny matter.
The intelligence community did say, however, that the Russians attempted to influence the results of the 2016 election. As I discussed in detail twice before in this thread, the intelligence community has already published multiples sources of information supporting their consensus on Russian interference in the election. I am referring to the unclassified evidence; not the classified evidence.
So there are two different ideas, one of which is well-grounded and one of which is speculative:
- There is no solid proof of Russian loyalties in Trump's staff--just meetings, whose content is not yet public, that were strangely kept quiet.
- There is solid proof of Russian interference in the election. That doesn't necessarily mean Russia successfully gained real influence in American politics.
Trump's persona as a great businessman and even as a billionaire are both, essentially, myths. He couldn't produce a billion dollars in liquid assets if his life depended on it. His total failures and bankruptcies in Atlantic City had reached the point where American banks were no longer loaning him money, and indeed, he owed some of them 100s of millions of dollars. He had to turn elsewhere for capital.
As someone who built his reputation in the late 70s and 80s New York Real Estate world, there is no way that Donald Trump didn't come into contact with the shadiest figures in organized crime. It would have been an impossibility. So we know with very little doubt that he is willing to do business with the most loathsome people imaginable. While the business dealings themselves are byzantine, the crux of the matter is this: Russian banks and oligarchs have been propping up Donald Trump financially for years. If they are, that means Putin is by default, as no large amounts of money move around in Russia without him knowing or receiving a taste. His dealings there became so vast that once he started to run for President, he was immediately subject to being blackmailed. Enter Manafort as Campaign Manager. Carter Page as an advisor. Flynn as his National Security voice. I won't go so far as to call them handlers, but it's damn close. I don't know what kind of quid pro quo has gone on up to this point, but I'm almost certain the first part of it was changing the language of the RNC platform backing off criticizing Russia for the situation in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.
This is why Trump didn't release his tax returns. OF COURSE he is hiding something in them, or they would have been presented to the public. This is why his closest advisers have not just been "keeeping quiet" (as @semiticgod points out) about their meetings, but they are actively lying about them on a nearly daily basis, even though there seems to be no earthly reason to do so. You don't keep your tax returns secret if there isn't something you want hidden. You certainly don't lie for no reason, and MULTIPLE people don't lie about the SAME thing for no reason.
Again, there are reports (unconfirmed, but alot of what is coming out NOW was dismissed as unconfirmed and conspiratorial a few months ago, in this very thread) that many parts of the much-maligned dossier are starting to check out. John McCain is thinking about calling the British MI-6 agent who compiled it in front of Congress (though no one actually knows where he is because he went into hiding). Trump himself clearly feels he has to do pre-emptive strike by trying to lay the blame on what comes out in the future on any number of things: leaks, the Intelligence Community, Obama, Hillary, and basically whoever he can think of that isn't him. Trump (according to ABC News) was absolutely livid in a meeting with Preibus and Bannon when he found out Sessions had recused himself. The issue of Russia, more than any other, sends him into these unhinged fits. Trump is scared of one thing, and it's clear by his behavior. He's scared of the constant focus on his Russian ties. He knows what's there, and it's clear by his behavior this morning that he thinks other people now know what's there. I suspect by the end of the year we'll ALL know what's there, and that it will likely be the biggest political scandal in American history. That's simply my take on the situation. Of course none of this is proven yet. But a hell of alot of stuff HAS come to light in the past few weeks that was laughed off by critics of the Russian angle months ago. This stuff has been out there on the fringes since the summer. It's to reporter's credit that they haven't gone with alot of it because they can't prove it yet. But the pieces come together day by day. My suspicion and prediction is that it will continue to happen until the big shoe drops, and then all hell is going to break loose.
Under Obama, the powers of the NSA were expanded to such a degree unprecedented (even over the Patriot Act and Bush), and we know from Snowden the NSA will go so far as to create back doors in popular and absolutely necessary encryption algorithms in daily use today, to allow them the ability to breach anything.
Furthermore there have been many incidents in the past of improper surveillance under Obama, such as intercepting Angela Merkel's communication which caused an international incident, to secretly obtaining Associated Press' phone records.
The problem is that because Obama approved the wide expansion and surveillance of the NSA he is by default implicated in every incident of improper breach of privacy.
Further complicating this whole thing, Is that the Obama administration twice requested FISA to wiretap Trump.
This was not widely reported in the media, so we need more investigation to understand the whole thing before jumping to conclusion.
But it is by no means simple.
There are only two possible ways to look at what Donald Trump said this morning: he is either a.) nuts or b.) he just revealed that he was the target of a investigation that would have REQUIRED a FISA court to sign off on it.
The Administration didn't ask. The FBI did. If a FISA warrant was issued, it came as the result of an FBI investigation, NOT from the White House. What you are saying is wholly inaccurate. And the FISA Court does not wiretap. They grant the requests for the authorization.
And everyone reading this knows that Trump was trying to make it seem like Obama PERSONALLY targeted and signed off on this. Which everyone reading this also knows is a total load of horseshit.
@vanatos , by what stretch of the imagination is it improper to tap a foreign leader's phone? Unlike tapping Americans' phones, that just comes under the heading of the NSA doing its job. And if the Germans don't have teams trying to tap Trump's phone, then the head of German intelligence needs to be fired for dereliction of duty.
We already have historical incidents showing what happens when this power is abused, by past Communist regimes.
Furthermore, it by default causes international incidents of breaches of sovereignty if the NSA starts breaching the phones of other countries.
It is not 'more acceptable' to tap a foreign phone, it is less acceptable, because American agencies can only ever have any authority over...American matters, not reach across to other nations.
Realize that this is the kind of stuff that brought Nixon down. Paranoia and using the Office of the Presidency to try dismantle an ongoing investigation.
Here is a very interesting write-up of the complexities under strictly legal terms.
There is so much complexity, so i try to quote the specific legal parts and important bolded.
What crimes could have been committed? Ironically, for Democrats falsely accusing Attorney General Sessions, perjury and conspiracy to commit perjury, as well as intentional violations of FISA. Rather shockingly, no law current forbids misusing the power of the Presidency to spy on one’s adversaries. What the law does forbid is lying to any judicial officer to obtain any means of surveillance. What the law does forbid, under criminal penalty, is the misuse of FISA. Both derive from the protections of the Fourth Amendment itself. Under section 1809, FISA makes it a crime for anyone to either “engage in” electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA without following the law’s restrictions, or “disclose” or “use” information gathered from it in contravention of the statute’s sharp constrictions.
FISA, 50 USC 1801, et seq., is a very limited method of obtaining surveillance authority. The reason for its strict limits is that FISA evades the regular federal court process, by not allowing regularly, Constitutionally appointed federal judges and their magistrates to authorize surveillance the Fourth Amendment would otherwise forbid. Instead, the Chief Justice handpicks the FISA court members, who have shown an exceptional deference to the executive branch. This is because FISA court members trust the government is only bringing them surveillance about pending terror attacks or “grave hostile” war-like attacks, as the FISA statute limits itself to. Thus, a FISA application can only be used in very limited circumstances.
FISA can only be used for “foreign intelligence information.” Now that sounds broad, but is in fact very limited under the law. The only “foreign intelligence information” allowed as a basis for surveillance is information necessary to protect the United States against actual or potential “grave” “hostile” attack, war-like sabotage or international terror. Second, it can only be used to eavesdrop on conversations where the parties to the conversation are a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. An agent of a foreign power cannot be a United States person unless they are knowingly involved in criminal espionage. No warrant is allowed on that person unless a FISA court finds probable cause the United States person is knowingly engaged in criminal espionage. Even then, if it involves a United States person, special steps must be taken to “minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of non publicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons.”
This includes procedures that require they never identify the person, or the conversation, being surveilled, to the public where that information is not evidence of a particular crime. Third, the kind of information sought concerns solely information about a pending or actual attack on the country. That is why the law limits itself to sabotage incidents involving war, not any form or kind of “sabotage,” explicitly limiting itself to those acts identified in section 105 of Title 18 of the United States Code.
First, it is not apparent FISA could ever be invoked. Second, it is possible Obama’s team may have perjured themselves before the FISA court by withholding material information essential to the FISA court’s willingness to permit the government surveillance. Third, it could be that Obama’s team illegally disseminated and disclosed FISA information in direct violation of the statute precisely prohibiting such dissemination and disclosure. FISA prohibits, under criminal penalty, Obama’s team from doing any of the three.
At the outset, the NSA should have never been involved in a domestic US election. Investigating the election, or any hacking of the DNC or the phishing of Podesta’s emails, would not be a FISA matter. It does not fit the definition of war sabotage or a “grave” “hostile” war-like attack on the United States, as constrictively covered by FISA. It is your run-of-the-mill hacking case covered by existing United States laws that require use of the regular departments of the FBI, Department of Justice, and Constitutionally Senate-appointed federal district court judges, and their appointed magistrates, not secretive, deferential FISA courts.
This raises the second problem: Obama’s team submission of an affidavit to to the FISA court. An application for a warrant of any kind requires an affidavit, and that affidavit may not omit material factors. A fact is “material” if it could have the possible impact of impacting the judicial officer deciding whether to authorize the warrant. Such affidavits are the most carefully drawn up, reviewed, and approved affidavits of law enforcement in our system precisely because they must be fully-disclosing, forthcoming, and include any information a judge must know to decide whether to allow our government to spy on its own. My assumption would be that intelligence officials were trying to investigate hacking of DNC which is not even a FISA covered crime, so therefore serious questions arise about what Obama administration attorneys said to the FISA court to even consider the application. If the claim was “financial ties” to Russia, then Obama knew he had no basis to use FISA at all.
Since Trump was the obvious target, the alleged failure to disclose his name in the second application could be a serious and severe violation of the obligation to disclose all material facts. Lastly, given the later behavior, it is evident any promise in the affidavit to protect the surveilled information from ever being sourced or disseminated was a false promise, intended to induce the illicit surveillance. This is criminalized both by federal perjury statutes, conspiracy statutes, and the FISA criminal laws themselves.
That raises the third problem: it seems the FISA-compelled protocols for precluding the dissemination of the information were violated, and that Obama’s team issued orders to achieve precisely what the law forbids, if published reports are true about the administration sharing the surveilled information far-and-wide to promote unlawful leaks to the press. This, too, would be its own crime, as it brings back the ghost of Hillary’s emails — by definition, FISA information is strictly confidential or it’s information that never should have been gathered. FISA strictly segregates its surveilled information into two categories: highly confidential information of the most serious of crimes involving foreign acts of war; or, if not that, then information that should never have been gathered, should be immediately deleted, and never sourced nor disseminated. It cannot be both.
Recognizing this information did not fit FISA meant having to delete it and destroy it. According to published reports, Obama’s team did the opposite: order it preserved, ordered the NSA to search it, keep it, and share it; and then Obama’s Attorney General issued an order to allow broader sharing of information and, according to the New York Times, Obama aides acted to label the Trump information at a lower level of classification for massive-level sharing of the information. The problem for Obama is simple — if it could fit a lower level of classification, then it had to be deleted and destroyed, not disseminated and distributed, under crystal clear FISA law.
-http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/yes-obama-could-be-prosecuted-if-involved-with-illegal-surveillance/
As i stress before, this is an incredibly complicated matter and we shouldn't jump to conclusions so early on.
The author can dress up 50 pages of fancy legalize to top it off, but the entire premise of his article is based on the falsehood that Obama has the power to do this. He DOES NOT.
This sums it up. Because on top of everything else, he fundamentally does NOT UNDERSTAND how government is structured and functions. And his tweets this morning were him making a bet his base doesn't either. On that note, at least, he's probably right on the money.
Furthermore you presume no foul play involved, The logic does not follow that even if it were illegal, therefore no illegal activity was committed, that would be pretty silly.
That is why we need to wait and see before jumping to conclusions.
And if you believe CIA and FBI have never been involved with Presidents initiatives in clandestine ways, i urge you to look at American history that will show you this is quite false.
Especially the CIA.
For the last time. The FISA courts are for the FBI and CIA. They are set up SPECIFICALLY to prevent the Executive Branch from ordering or requesting them directly. Furthermore, it has already been established in this case that both of these requests came from the FBI. No serious reporting disputes this.
Now Corey Lewandowski has gone on FOX News and has also accused Obama of bugging Jeff Session's office. Jesus jumped up Christ. Maybe Obama also kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and killed Nicole Brown Simpson.
The new line on the right, as of tonight, is forming. It isn't "lock her up", it's now "lock him up". From Breitbart, to Trump, to the Party line in 12 hours. This is how fascists and their followers operate.
What's been going on there?
It is also unclear who was involved, there are many different reports on this FISA requests, some reports involve Agencies under Obama.
The IRS targeting republicans scandal for example.
As i said, it doesn't help that the powers of the NSA and FISA are so secretive and abused.