Roh Ruh.
In an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press," Clapper said that he did not know of any FISA court order to authorize surveillance on Trump Tower.
"Obviously I can't speak officially anymore, but I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI there was no wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign," he said. "I can't speak for other Title III authorized entities in the government, or a state or local entity."
"If the FBI, for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for surveillance, would that be information you would know?" Chuck Todd asked.
"Yes," Clapper said.
"You would be told this, if there was a FISA court order on something like this," Todd pressed.
"I would know that. Yes," Clapper replied. "Something like this, absolutely."
"And at this point you can't confirm or deny whether that exists?" Todd asked.
"I can deny it," Clapper said.
"There is no FISA court order?" Todd pressed.
"Not to my knowledge," Clapper said.
"Of anything at Trump Tower?" Todd asked.
"No," Clapper said.
And then Fox and Friends went and asked Mark Levin what he thought...
which was that “He’s Not Nostradamus”.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” Levin told Fox News host Pete Hegseth on Sunday. “This is about the Obama administration’s spying.”
Levijn repeating the list of “sources” offered in his Brietbart column as proof that Obama allegedly ordered the wiretapping of Trump’s team. A careful reading of those reports, however, do not back up Levin’s conspiracy theory.
“Donald Trump is being attacked for [the accusations] he tweeted,” Levin said. “Donald Trump is the victim, his campaign is the victim, his transition team is the victim, his surrogates are the victim. These are police state tactics.”
When pressed for details on President Obama’s personal involvement, Levin replied, “I’m not Nostradamus here.”
The conspiracy theorist argued that any investigation against Trump would be unfair because Obama and Democrats had “squirreled their appointees into the bureaucracy.”
As a matter of fact Levin seems to have gotten his claim from a Enquirer styled Gossip site called HeatStreet which first of all says that the wiretap warrant request was denied.
Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US person
Heatstreet claims that some “sources say” there was a warrant issued for the content of emails — EMAILS — between a Trump server and SVB and Alfa bank. This claim — the one that Levin is specifically linking too, doesn’t include any “wiretaps.” Now Clapper says he would have been made aware of any FISA warrant, and he may be saying that honestly but most reports say that there are over 1,000 of those per year and that’s it’s exceeding rare for them to be denied.
According to Mother Jones.
After last week's revelations extensive National Security Agency surveillance of phone and internet communications, President Barack Obama made it a point to assure Americans that, not to worry, there is plenty of oversight of his administration's snooping programs. "We've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight," he said Friday, referring in part to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which was created in 1979 to oversee Department of Justice requests for surveillance warrants against foreign agents suspected of espionage or terrorism in the United States. But the FISC has declined just 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance requests made by the government in 33 years, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. That's a rate of .03 percent, which raises questions about just how much judicial oversight is actually being provided.
Clapper would know about a single warrant about emails on single server if it happen to be located in Trump Tower — out of 1,000 that year? Ok, maybe. It might be possible he missed one, but he sounded pretty confident on that point. Considering the source making the claim about the email warrant — Clapper could very well be right particularly since but — as noted in the comments — the server we’re talking about here is in Philadelphia, not in Trump Tower at all.
Since that’s the case Clapper and Heatstreet could both be correct because they’re talking about two different situations and issues. A FISA request for emails from some server in Philadelphia probably wouldn’t peak his specific interest or notice, not like a phone tap on Trump Tower would.
We do know that the FBI did investigates links between Trump and the Russians because they said so in October.
F.B.I. officials declined to comment on Monday. Intelligence officials have said in interviews over the last six weeks that apparent connections between some of Mr. Trump’s aides and Moscow originally compelled them to open a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Republican presidential candidate. Still, they have said that Mr. Trump himself has not become a target. And no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia’s election operations.
At least one part of the investigation has involved Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for much of the year. Mr. Manafort, a veteran Republican political strategist, has had extensive business ties in Russia and other former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, where he served as an adviser to that country’s ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.
They even mentioned the probe of the server, so that’s been public knowledge for months too.
F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 “look-up” messages — a first step for one system’s computers to talk to another — to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.
Levin is claiming that all the FBI files should be opened up to Congress including all of the Presidential Daily Briefings — which is ridiculous because Congress had already been briefed on this as Harry Reid made quite obvious when he said the FBI was hiding the truth.
In an interview with MSNBC, Reid said the FBI knew that the CIA had concluded with a high level of certainty that the Russian government was trying to get Donald Trump elected, as reported in an explosive story in the Washington Post. “This is not fake news. Intelligence officials are hiding connections to the Russian government. There is no question,” Reid said. “Comey knew and deliberately kept this info a secret.”
And we also know that President Obama and VP Biden weren’t briefed on this investigation and the memos from Christopher Steele that prompted it until January 12th, the same day that Trump was told.
This could be the case, all these investigations have been completely legal, above board and with public knowledge. Or it could be like Corey Lewandoski claims that Obama was wiretaping Jeff Sessions’ office when he sat down with Russian ambassador Kislyak — I guess — without a warrant at all.
Appearing on on Fox News’ Justice with Judge Jeanine, the former Trump aide turned lobbyist doubled down on President Trump’s accusation that Obama had the phones at Trump Tower tapped prior to the election, stating that Sessions was also placed under surveillance.
Like Trump, Lewandowski was long on accusations but short on evidence.
“They did spend time listening to conversations between then-Senator Jeff Sessions and the ambassador to Russia while he was in his Senate office,” Lewandowski told host Jeanine Pirro. “If that were to take place — which supposedly did take place — what other conversations did they listen in on from the American public?”
…
Calling it “very concerning,” Lewandowski added, “Is it possible that that previous administration was listening to the conversations that took place in Trump Tower from their political opponents? If that is the case, and what Donald Trump alludes to is accurate, then that’s very, very disturbing for our future going forward.”
Really, no. That didn’t really happen. That’s a complete load of crap.
These guys seem to be really confused, because we do know that Michael Flynn’s phone conversation with Kislyak was recorded because there was a transcript of it after he lied to the FBI and Vice President about it— but that’s because we always record anything that prominent Russia officials and agents say on the phone, and they know that.
During the time that I worked for a Defense Contractor on the B2 Bomber there was one other employee — among about 20,000 — who decided to sell secrets to the Russians. He began this effort by calling the Russian embassy in San Francisco. The Russians hung up on the call because they knew they were being listened to — and remember an embassy is legally foreign soil, so it’s not subject to a FISA warrant. Ultimately the FBI called him back pretending to be the Russians, setup a meeting, arrested him and had him tried on two counts of espionage.
LOS ANGELES -- A Northrop engineer arrested last week was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly trying to sell billions of dollars in 'stealth' bomber technology to FBI agents posing as Soviets.
The three-count indictment alleges that Thomas Patrick Cavanagh met three times with undercover agents offering to sell them secret documents, blue prints, drawings and other information involving the 'stealth' bomber, designed to pass undetected through enemy radar.
He’s currently serving two life sentences.
Lewandowski seems to be conflating what happened with Flynn on the phone to some imaginary surveillance of Sessions in his Senate Office, when in fact the person being watched through all of this — is Kislyak. Tracking Kislyak’s phone is what gets you to Flynn, but it would require planting an audio bug on him to get into what was said in Sessions’ office. I’m thinking that shit probably didn’t happen and no one has any evidence that it did, certainly not Lewandowski. He doesn’t know what the frack he’s talking about. Neither does Levin. Neither does Trump.
The dumbest idea I’ve heard yet is the call to have Congress investigate the Obama administration for having investigated Trump. Like where do you think that’s gonna lead other than back to Kislyak and other Russians who actually were in fairly regular contact with Trump’s people?
It’s like a circle-jerk of fail.
I think the most relevant thing is what Chuck Schumer said to day — wiretaps or not — Trump is a deep trouble.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Sunday that President Donald Trump is "in trouble" whether his claims that President Barack Obama's administration obtained a wiretap on Trump Tower are true or not.
"If he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong," Schumer told Chuck Todd on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
He said that doing so is "beneath the dignity of the presidency" and "really hurts people's view of government."
"On the other hand, if it's true, it's even worse for the President," he said. "Because that means that a federal judge, independently elected, has found probable cause that the President, or people on his staff, had probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent."
"So either way, the President makes it worse with these tweets," Schumer said. "And either way, Chuck, the President's in trouble.”
This may be a Hail Mary play be the Trumpians, but I think they’re headed for either an interception or a fumble. Neither option is good.
Sunday, Mar 5, 2017 · 10:39:45 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Comey has come out arguing for the DOJ to reject the SCROTUS call for a wiretap investigation.
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.
…
In his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his press secretary, Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said, “President Donald J. 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.”
And what if their investigation was perfectly legitimate and justified, eh? Frankly, I hope Congress goes for it.
Sunday, Mar 5, 2017 · 11:14:47 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Y’know Trump probably believes he was wire-tapped by Obama because he eavesdrops on his staffers at Mar-A-Lago.
At Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach resort he runs as a club for paying guests and celebrities, Donald Trump had a telephone console installed in his bedroom that acted like a switchboard, connecting to every phone extension on the estate, according to six former workers. Several of them said he used that console to eavesdrop on calls involving staff.
Trump’s spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded to written questions with one sentence: “This is totally and completely untrue.”
...
BuzzFeed News spoke with six former employees familiar with the phone system at the estate.
Four of them — speaking on condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements — said that Trump listened in on phone calls at the club during the mid-2000s. They did not know if he eavesdropped more recently.
They said he listened in on calls between club employees or, in some cases, between staff and guests. None of them knew of Trump eavesdropping on guests or members talking on private calls with people who were not employees of Mar-a-Lago. They also said that Trump could eavesdrop only on calls made on the club’s landlines and not on calls made from guests’ cell phones.