Donald Trump can’t quite remember what he’s supposed to say about FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). He hates it because Obama used it to … do something something.
Except that any opposition to FISA is also opposition to … Donald Trump, who has been singularly supportive of the law. While both Democrats and Republicans have called for revisions to FISA, and in particular how investigations of foreign agents can involve US citizens, the position of the Trump White House has always been for a straight reauthorization of the bill as-is with all those “controversial” authorities intact.
When Donald Trump searches around for just who has been supporting this awful bill, he might want to step toward a mirror.
Trump's White House ... has been aggressively lobbying for the renewal of FISA.
And steely eyed Donald Trump has a very strong response to the idea of amending the one part of the law that whiner Donald Trump is complaining about.
In a statement late Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration "strongly opposes" the amendment and called for it to be rejected.
Can we got a segment on Fox & Friends, stat? Trump needs to know what he thinks!
That Donald Trump is Donald Trump’s biggest opponent on the bill shouldn’t come as a surprise. Multiple times this week, it’s been necessary to remind Trump of “his” positions. It was a big feature of Trump’s “look, I’m not a moron” show on immigration, where he demonstrated an ability to stay upright for almost an hour—but not to hold onto a thought more than a minute.
Some of the meeting's most fascinating moments came as GOP leaders tried to gently rein Trump in. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, for instance, reminded him of his own position, that any move on DACA should be twinned with border security improvements, prompting Trump to quickly backtrack.
It’s important that Trump be reminded of “his” positions, because Trump’s beliefs run exactly as deep as the last thing he heard.
When it comes to FISA, Donald Trump settled on a personal hatred of the bill after he made his claims that President Obama had “wiretapped” Trump Tower. This triggered a pointless round-robin with Devin Nunes in the role of Inspector Clueless who served to ferry information from Trump’s advisors in Trump’s White House, past repeat press conferences, and back to “inform” Trump of what Trump’s team told Nunes. This treadmill of disinformation created the “unmasking” pseudo-scandal that never existed in an effort to prove Trump right.
But when word eventually emerged that the FBI had been monitoring former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort under a FISA warrant, Trump shifted his “told you so” there, despite the fact that the FBI’s request to monitor Manafort began in 2014, well before he was ever involved in Trump’s campaign. On Manafort,it wasn’t so much that President Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump’s campaign, as it was that Trump hired for the head of his campaign a guy so corrupt, with so many connections to Russian assets across multiple countries, that the FBI had already been watching him for years.
And there was also Carter Page, who became the subject of a FISA warrant when he traveled to Russia to give a speech critical of US policy and appeared to be acting as an agent of a foreign power based on activity going back to 2013. There’s no evidence that Obama either ordered, or was aware of, the warrant issued for Page, but then FBI director James Comey made the information public in a Senate hearing.
There also seems to be an almost certain chance that other Trump campaign members were monitored under FISA warrants, not because they had warrants against them, but because people like Michael Flynn insisted on making contact with Russian officials and foreign agents who were already subject to FBI scrutiny. Michael Flynn’s indictment and guilty plea was likely based on his wandering into just such an existing warrant in his eagerness to chat with the Russian ambassador.
None of this has a thing to do with the Steele dossier—which has become the Republican touchstone in efforts to suggest the Russia investigation is partisan, despite all evidence to the contrary. There also seems to be no evidence that President Obama was ever involved in pushing any monitoring of the Trump campaign.
However, it’s absolutely true that several members of Trump’s campaign were surveilled under FISA warrants. Because they were either 1) known crooks under investigation well before they came on board the campaign or 2) talked to foreign agents who were already under FBI scrutiny. As to whether there was done “badly,” as Trump says in his tweet … that will become more evident soon. However, based on what we’ve seen so far, it appears they were watched quite “goodly.”
In the meantime, while Trump was leaning back to enjoy a morning bed burger, someone apparently gently reminded him of his positions.
The look into the “unmasking” issue triggered by Nunes’ antics revealed that there was … no problem with unmasking. So good fix, Donald! You did nothing.
Let’s have more of that.