So, he told Trump, “Hey, I am concerned that they got you on tape talking to criminals and spies that they had under surveillance. They know everything that you talked about with these criminals and spies. You should be very concerned.”
No one is above the law in this country so it is quite reasonable that politicians would be investigated for all the same types of possible crimes as any other American ranging from tax evasion to domestic abuse to bribery to natural security violations, etc.
Nothing at all “smells bad” when law enforcement professionals are making the decisions to investigate people for possible criminal investigations. What “smells bad” is when politicians are making these decisions.
So the question is not whether or not Trump and his associates were investigated for possible national security violations but to what extent Democratic politicians were involved. You use the term “Obama administration”. But the big distinction is to be made between the relatively small number of politicians and the hundreds of thousands of civil servants. Where is the evidence that politicians were involved and not just the national security civil servants?
We don’t even need to go this far – no one, including Trump and Nunes (and certainly not Okrahoma) has presented any evidence that there was any actual wiretapping of Trump, his campaign, or his property. If evidence were actually to be presented, then it might be worth looking into why it was done, but right now, there’s no more evidence for this than for Trump’s myriad of other lies about Obama.
What “smells bad” is not the incidental collection of surveillance info - that can definitely happen. What smells bad is the dissemination of the names of the “incidental” parties and contents of conversations - which is definitely against the rules.
That’s a separate issue.
Trump could demand all the records, including court orders, and put this to rest. Why doesn’t he?
What does this have to do with what Trump actually said, and what does it have to do with Obama?
This happened after Obama issued an executive order in the last few days of his administration that allowed such dissemination to happen - right in time:
What does this have to do with Trump’s tweet about wiretapping, and what does this order have to do with the dissemination you’re criticizing? So far, you haven’t presented any actual evidence of anything. So far, there is no more evidence for this claim than Trump’s years of birther lies.
Trump has canceled other Obama EOs with his own. He couldn’t do one more?
Not to mention the fact that encouraging the various intelligence-gathering agencies to share with each other is a good thing. 11 September 2001 might have ended differently if the reports of radical Muslims training to use boxcutters in the hijacking of planes weren’t sat on until after the fact.
A bit late after the info was already disseminated no?
What is the evidence that this dissemination had anything to do with that order?
So, are you now disavowing your previous statements that Trump or his campaign were under surveillance by the Obama administration? Is your claim now that he and his campaign wasn’t under surveillance, but were incidentally picked up as part of some other surveillance operation having nothing to do with Trump or his campaign, and the wrongdoing, if any, has to do with whether the names that were incidentally picked up were distributed?
If you’re backing away from your charge that Trump or his campaign were themselves under surveillance, I’d appreciate you saying that explicitly.
I’m not being snarky about this question, but it is very important to a factual response to what you have raised. Do you know the difference between 12333 collection and FISA collection?
Yes, they were. “Incidentally”. Which was definitely exacerbated by later dissemination of the “incidentally” obtained information.
Yes. One purportedly is domestic collection of intelligence. The other is foreign. The distinction is murkier is that: see Executive Order 12333 on American Soil, and Other Tales from the FISA Frontier | Web Policy
And how is that relevant? Neither I nor you have any idea whether the “incidental” collection of information was done under 12333 or FISA.
By what evidence do you make this claim?
Flynn’s info and contents of his conversations got all the way to NYT. If that’s not “widely disseminated” I don’t know what is.
Accepting Nunes statements at face value … no, not correct. Completely incorrect.
Let us imagine that the FBI has a certain individual or group of individuals under surveillance … who knows what for, possible child porn distribution, who knows. Trump and/or his people stop into the offices or call the suspected child porn distributor and are recorded in a conversation … of some sort … maybe purchasing, maybe selling, maybe innocently asking if they have a cup of sugar to borrow. They are now recorded. But they were not under surveillance themselves … whether they were recording doing something criminal or not they were caught in the recording incidentally, not surveilled.
And no that is not ordering the surveillance of Trump or his team. Not ordering the wiretapping of Trump Tower. Not using a microwave as a camera.
Now mind you there may be some surveillance of Trump’s team that was done as part of an investigation into Russian election meddling and possible collusion. That would not require Obama ordering it and of course if there was cause for such an investigation to be done it should have been done.
Given the web of activities that Trump and his team members have been involved in it is likely in fact that they will have had contact with individuals who may, for reasons possibly having nothing to do with the Trump team members (or possibly to do with) be under surveillance and be caught incidentally. You cavort with those who are, with cause, suspected of crimes and under surveillance, and you will possibly be recorded as well.
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Nunes explicitly said it had nothing to do with Russia.
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I would love for Democrats to try to split hairs publicly (and repeatedly, I am sure) between “there may be some surveillance of Trump’s team” and “Trump’s team was under surveillance”.
That would be hilarious.