Trump Accuses Obama of Wire-Tapping Him Before the Election

By Al Perrotta Published on March 4, 2017

In a series of stunning tweets early Saturday morning, President Donald Trump accused his predecessor Barack Obama of orchestrating the wire-tapping of Trump Tower in the days before the 2016 election. Through a spokesman, Obama denies he ever “ordered” any surveillance against a U.S. citizen.

Trump’s public targeting of Obama would appear to be triggered by two reports: First, on Thursday night, conservative talk show host and lawyer Mark Levin outlined the known steps Obama and his operatives have taken to undermine the President. Then on Friday, Breitbart expanded on Levin’s case. Of note:

June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

October 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes.

The New York Times broke the story in February alleging that wire-taps and phone records indicated regular contact between the Trump campaign and other associates and Russian intelligence officials in the year leading up to the election. The Times also revealed this Wednesday that Obama administration figures spread the intelligence about those alleged contacts across the government. The goal, notes The Daily Caller News Foundation, was to leave a trail of evidence for government investigators to follow.

The Last Resort blog also reported last night on a curious coincidence that suggests the internal intelligence war over Trump goes even deeper. They observe that National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers traveled, without permission of administration higher ups, to New York on November 17 to meet with the President-elect at Trump Tower. The very next day, the Washington Post ran an article detailing how the Obama administration was upset at the visit.

In fact, the Post reports, the administration had been looking only weeks earlier into dumping Admiral Rogers. The Last Resort suggests that Rogers disapproved of the operation against Trump, and had run afoul of Obama loyalists CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence John Clapper.

Obama Reaction

In response to Trump’s allegation, a spokesman for former President Obama denied Obama “nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

What must be noted is that Obama’s spokesperson is not denying that wire-tapping of Donald Trump took place. Only that Obama did not “order” it, nor did anyone within the office of the White House. They are not denying Donald Trump was targeted by the Obama Administration; in fact, they seem to suggest such targeting was done by an “independent investigation led by the DOJ.”

This would be the same Department of Justice headed by Obama appointee Loretta Lynch, who within weeks of the first FISA request in June 2016 requesting surveillance on Trump and his associates was secretly meeting with the husband of Trump’s campaign opponent.

 

This story will be updated.

 

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