So this morning Trump went on a bunch of rage tweets — again. As noted by Mark Sumner on the FP.
Trump poured out his claims in a series of tweets that sought to leap the already high bar of insanity set by his usual statements.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
An hour after spewing off these tweets — and mixing in the shocking news that the Russian ambassador had visited the White House during the Obama administration — Trump has provided no details of this “wire tapping.”
But the most likely source of Trump sudden tweet rant probably isn’t something he learned from a FBI briefing or from a chastened AG Jeff Sessions. He most likely read this on his favorite alt-Fact site, Breitbart.
If you’ve actually been paying attention, this information isn’t really news. It was just news to Trump because he’s not paying attention.
Just like his people — who skipped their ethics training — they don't know that the Deputy Director of the FBI is prohibited by DOJ rules from contacting the White House Chief of staff about an ongoing investigation, the same is true for the White House initiating investigations against their political opponents without any probable cause. Or a warrant. But then again, Trump has no idea.
That’s how Robert Reich sees it.
This morning Trump went berserk, tweeting a series of bizarre accusations charging that former president Barack Obama orchestrated 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, he said the former president was a “Bad (or sick) guy!”
Folks, we’ve got a huge problem on our hands. Either:
1. Trump is more nuts than we suspected -- a true paranoid.
2. Or he's correct, in which case there's probable cause that he committed treason. No president can order a wiretap. For federal agents to obtain a wiretap on Trump’s phone conversations, the Justice Department would first have had to convince a federal judge that it had gathered sufficient evidence that there was probable cause to believe that Trump had committed a serious crime or was an agent of a foreign power, depending on whether it was a criminal or foreign intelligence wiretap.
3. Or Trump’s outburst was triggered by a commentary on Breitbart News reporting an assertion Thursday night by rightwing talk-radio host Mark Levin suggesting Obama and his administration used “police state” tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team’s dealings with Russian operatives. If this was the source of Trump’s ravings this morning, we’ve got a president willing to put the prestige and power of his office behind a baseless claim emanating from rightwing purveyors of lies.
I’ll go with “All the Above” Johnny, what do I win?
The President can’t “order wiretaps” — that decision is not even up to him, because Nixon, it’s up to the FBI and they have to have the request approved by the FISA court.
Just ask someone who actually did go to their ethics training, former Obama Official Ben Rhodes.
Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to Mr. Obama, said in a Twitter message directed at Mr. Trump on Saturday that “no president can order a wiretap” and added, “Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you.”
The FBI made two FISA warrant requests in 2016 regarding Trump and his associates, one in June which was denied and another in October. The first was IMO a result of the FBI trying to confirm the Steele dossier, was just a month before the big dump of DNC emails by Wikileaks, and also before Trump said “Why doesn’t Russia hack and release Hillary’s emails?”
Brietbart and Trump say that was a “joke” — I say it was a confession.
The second was about the report of an email server in Trump Tower communicating with a Russian bank called Alfa, which really was because it was generating a ton of spam.
The FBI very strangely, offered to hire Christopher Steele just before the election, then recinded that offer when he went public with David Corn on Oct 31st after being frustrated by their lack of results suspecting they were covering up for Trump — as Harry Reid alleged — and then seems to have suddenly — like the same day, Oct31st — determined that “there was no influence” between Trump and Russia in direction contradiction of Corn’s report.
Again, that smells of cover-up.
None of this was a secret, both FISA warrants were previously reported. Mark Levin talked about it on his radio show on Thursday, then Brietbart summarized it yesterday, which I presume, is when Trump “Discovered” it and started tweeting this morning. His other tweet about Kislyak visiting the Obama White House “22 Times” also comes from a Breitbart story from yesterday.
The arguments that poor Jeff Sessions has simply been wrongfully misunderstood in his answers about meeting with Kislyak, is on Breitbart. Never mind that he never answered the question he was asked “What would you do about [links between Trump and Russia]?” and instead volunteered his false claim that he never met “any Russians” even though the first time was at the RNC — away from his official office and capacity, paid for by campaign funds, but somehow wasn’t “associated with the campaign.”
This “full context of the question” nonsense is complete crap — he wasn’t being asked who he did or didn’t meet, he was being asked what he would do about such allegations as Attorney General.
As is the claim that “Nancy Pelosi did it too” when in reality she didn’t meet Kislyak privately as Sessions did, she sat down at a conference table with then Russian President Medvedev. Kislyak is like the forth guy down on the left, behind the other guy. She probably didn’t even notice him.
Oh and Schumer met a Russian — Putin himself — way back in 2003. 17 years ago. Wow that’s relevant. Did he get paid $40,000 for it like Mike Flynn was?
Hey I’ve met Chuck Schumer too — at Netroots Nation ‘14 in Detroit. We joked about no longer having to swim the Detroit river over to Windsor Canada in order to get decent, affordable Healthcare. It’s a Scandal I say — a Scandal.
Both of them met with the Russians in public, with reporters and cameras present — which is why we have pictures. Neither of them lied about or magically mis-remembered it under oath now did they? Nope.
Trump is just parroting what he just read. If you want to know what he’s thinking, just check the front page of Brietbart, or maybe Sputnik News or RT.
Naturally his response to the Brietbart story is also now the top story on Brietbart and also RT.com, like an endless mobius strip of alt-bullshit.
My next Sunday diary will be summarizing all of this from top to bottom.
Friday, Mar 10, 2017 · 4:53:01 PM +00:00
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Frank Vyan Walton
Not surprisingly, this is confirmed.
The Associated Press reported that an aide slipped the Breitbart News article, which alleged that Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign, to Trump last week. The report was based on unsubstantiated claims made by right-wing talk show host Mark Levin.
The aide, who wasn’t named by the AP, placed a printout of the report into the president’s daily reading pile, and Trump then tweeted out the accusation Saturday without offering any proof.
The White House has not given a clear answer on the evidence Trump used to justify the accusation, and the president has asked Congress to find the proof for him.
