{"id":1627,"date":"2017-03-08T22:19:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T03:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1627"},"modified":"2017-03-08T22:19:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T03:19:00","slug":"surveillance-president-trump-obama-government-fact-vs-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/surveillance-president-trump-obama-government-fact-vs-hype.html","title":{"rendered":"The Surveillance of President Trump by the Obama Government: Fact vs Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday morning, after months of baseless allegations<\/a> that he had colluded with the Russian government to steal the presidential election from Hillary Clinton, President Trump had reached his limit.<\/p>\n

With just a few tweets, Trump flipped the script on his detractors by doing what no Republican had ever had the guts to do:<\/p>\n

He called out President Obama directly and accused his predecessor of having \u201cwire tapped\u201d his home.<\/p>\n

At first, the usual suspects\u2014i.e. those who never tire of grossly underestimating Trump, irrespectively of the frequency with which he owns them\u2014laughed off his charge, claiming that he presented no evidence for it.\u00a0 Yet within no time this began to change as those of the President\u2019s critics in the media were reminded that it is they <\/em>who had been presenting evidence for his claims not long ago.<\/p>\n

The left-leaning Mother Jones<\/a>, <\/em>for example, stated in October of 2016 that \u201cseveral national security experts\u201d maintained that \u201cthere is widespread concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election\u2014to embarrass the United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks appear to have been designed to benefit Trump.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what appears to have occurred.<\/p>\n

Initially, according to Heat Street<\/a>, <\/em>because of a connection between a server in Trump Tower and a server for two Russian banks, the FBI decided to determine whether Trump may have committed \u201cfinancial and banking offenses.\u201d It concluded not only that there had been no such offenses, but that the activity between the servers may have been nothing more than spam.<\/p>\n

Back in October, the New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> that upon its months-long investigation of presidential candidate Trump, the FBI found \u201cno clear link to Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAgents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead\u2014which they ultimately came to doubt\u2014about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the same day that the Times <\/em>story was published, the unapologetically anti-Trump Slate <\/em>confirmed<\/a> both that the FBI had been investigating Trump and <\/em>that it concluded that there was no wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In other words, the FBI looked into a possible criminal <\/em>matter and came up empty. But then<\/em> its counter-intelligence arm chose to reframe the issue in terms of national security<\/em> and request a warrant from FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.\u00a0 Doing so would allow the FBI to continue monitoring Trump, a private citizen, at the time, despite a criminal investigation that should have put the whole issue to rest.\u00a0 Andrew McCarthy explains<\/a> that while citizens \u201cnormally may not be subjected to searches or electronic eavesdropping absent probable cause of a crime,\u201d FISA permits exceptions as long as \u201cthere is [a] probable cause they are agents of a foreign power<\/em>\u201d (italics original).<\/p>\n

No one with a straight face could possibly think, much less say aloud, that Trump is a Russian spy.<\/p>\n

So, in June of last year\u2014shortly after Trump secured the GOP nomination\u2014a request was filed with FISA to continue monitoring a possible Trump link with Russia (the request is said to have \u201cnamed\u201d Trump, whatever exactly this means).\u00a0 That the agency had no grounds for its request, that it had gathered nothing from its previous searching, is borne out by the following fact:<\/p>\n

In June of 2013, The Wall Street Journal <\/em>published an article<\/a> in which it revealed that in 33 years, from its beginning in 1979 to 2012, the FISA Court granted more than 33,900<\/em> warrant requests while turning down only 11. <\/em>It had a 99.97% rate of approval.\u00a0 It\u2019s been that easy.<\/p>\n

And yet the FBI\u2019s request to continue monitoring an alleged Trump\/Russia tie was denied<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Four months later\u2014shortly before the general election\u2014the FBI narrowed its focus and resubmitted its request to the FISA Court.\u00a0 This time, Trump apparently was not named and the request to continue surveilling an American citizen for whom the government had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing (and the members of his inner circle, including some private citizens, like General Michael Flynn) was granted.<\/p>\n

Still, not a scintilla of evidence of impropriety, much less collusion to \u201chack\u201d an election,\u201d was forthcoming.<\/p>\n

Obama, of course, speaking through one of his former spokespersons, denied ever having \u201cinterfered\u201d with an \u201cindependent\u201d Department of Justice investigation or \u201cordered\u201d surveillance of \u201cany private citizen.\u201d\u00a0 Immediately, observers noted the carefully worded response of Team Obama, a \u201cnon-denial denial<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider: Obama does not deny that a private citizen, candidate Trump, was being monitored by his <\/em>Justice Department. <\/em>Presidents can\u2019t \u201corder\u201d FISA warrants, as Obama surely knows.\u00a0 However, only a fool could think that Obama was ignorant of the spying, and it stretches credibility to the snapping point to imagine that this spying on a private citizen and his arch-political opponent, the man who he rightly feared would roll back his legacy, was without Obama\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n

At any rate, it was Obama\u2019s administration and, though he never lived by this rule, the buck does and should stop with the President.<\/p>\n

Trump may have spoken (or tweeted) clumsily, but the gist of his charge is eminently plausible given what the Obama-friendly media have been telling us for months.\u00a0 As Mark Levin said, the evidence for Obama\u2019s spying is \u201coverwhelming<\/a>.\u201d \u00a0Levin also recommended that Congress should request copies of Obama\u2019s daily intelligence briefings from the past year to determine what he knew and when he knew it.<\/p>\n

When Newsmax editor<\/a><\/em> Chris Ruddy spoke to him about Obama\u2019s denial that he had anything to do with the surveillance to which Trump had been subjected, the President shot back: \u201cThis will be investigated, it will all come out.\u00a0 I will be proven right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given Trump\u2019s track record these nearly last two years, there is good reason to take him at his word here.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday morning, after months of baseless allegations that he had colluded with the Russian government to steal the presidential election from Hillary Clinton, President Trump had reached his limit. With just a few tweets, Trump flipped the script on his detractors by doing what no Republican had ever had the guts to do: He…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Surveillance of President Trump by the Obama Government: Fact vs Hype<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/surveillance-president-trump-obama-government-fact-vs-hype.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Surveillance of President Trump by the Obama Government: Fact vs Hype\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Saturday morning, after months of baseless allegations that he had colluded with the Russian government to steal the presidential election from Hillary Clinton, President Trump had reached his limit. 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