Obama Wiretapped Trump

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Mar 2017

That the Obama Administration wiretapped offices in the Trump Tower in October, 2016 – the stretch run of the campaign – is old news.  It was first reported by Heat Street on Nov 7, 2016, just a day before the election.  That report was followed up quickly by reports in UK’s The Guardian newspaper.  Oblique references to it may have appeared belatedly in the New York Times.

National Review had a couple of articles commenting on the details then emerging of the wiretapping.  David French and Andrew McCarthy wrote about it on January 11, 2017, and McCarthy wrote more extensively on it in an article published on January 17, 2017.

No one in the main stream media wagged their tongue about the police state methodology being employed by Obama to tilt the election in favor of his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton.  Obama, hamstrung by having to work in an actual democracy, could not invent something out of whole cloth, but if the slightest word hinting at collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia appeared in the wiretaps, it would have been splashed all over the media immediately.  Nothing like it was heard, and so the matter ought to have ended there so far as the Obama Administration was concerned.

That the Obama Administration wiretapped Trump Tower late in the campaign, after trying and failing to get a FISA warrant in June, 2016, did not become news until President Donald Trump himself ranted about it in his Twitter account early this morning.

Of course, the MSM tried to tie the tirade to a report that appeared in Breitbart yesterday, hoping that waving the name Breitbart around would immediately discredit Trump’s accusation.  But it isn’t working, and shouldn’t work because that the Obama Administration had wiretapped Trump Tower has been open-source news for five months.

That the Obama Administration people are sensing trouble with this appears in their improbable non-denial denials.  The first non-denial denial is to say that Trump has offered no “proof.”  Except that the proof has been in the open source media undenied by Obama for five months now, and Obama is counting on most people not realizing it.

The next three non-denial denials appear in the following three quotes from close Obama associates:

“Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for the former president.

Lewis also said Saturday: "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.”

Former Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes tweeted earlier in the day: "No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you."

Of course, Obama can’t “order” surveillance on Donald Trump, he has to get either a criminal warrant or a FISA warrant, and it is a judge who permits the wiretapping.  Let it be noted that neither CIA Director John Brennan nor Attorney-General Loretta Lynch count as a “White House official” because neither one worked at the White House.

It may well be a cardinal rule “not to interfere with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice” but that doesn’t mean that Obama can’t order the opening of one, or strongly encouraging the opening of one.

The qualifier “led by the Department of Justice” leaves open the possibility that the investigation was being led by the CIA, i.e. John Brennan, and Obama is completely free to order Brennan to direct CIA intelligence resources at some thing or another.  Obama ordered his good friend and a person he greatly admired, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to be wiretapped.  Trump isn’t someone Obama even likes.

The qualifier “independent” investigation also leaves open the possibility of Obama ordering an investigation, in virtue of which it is not ‘independent’ and therefore can be directed by the President.

Lawyers are supposed to be skilled in words, and the non-denial denials are worded in a way which misdirects without being outright lies.  Effectively, these denials don’t deny that Trump was wiretapped, what they appear to say is that Obama himself had nothing to do with it.  Except on close examination, there are enough loopholes in the qualifiers that none of these statements will prove to be outright lies if it comes out that Obama was up to his neck in surveillance of Trump.

Trump unleased this tirade against Obama for a reason.  That Obama engaged in police state methods against Trump in the midst of an election doesn’t look good on the former president.  Obama and his people know it, and that is why they are in full spin mode.  The next week may well expose the direction of Trump’s counter-offensive against allegations of collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia, and taking direct aim and Obama could be part of it.

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