Today The New York Times has a story saying President Trump made a “widely disputed allegation” that President Barack Obama ordered the wire tapping of his campaign.
It also reports that Obama and his former aides have called the accusation completely false.
“Mr. Trump’s demand for a congressional investigation appears to be based, at least in part, on unproved claims by Breitbart News and conservative talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing the tapping of the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides at Trump Tower in New York,” the newspaper reports.
This same newspaper reported on Jan. 19, prior to Trump’s inauguration, that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were examining “intercepted communications” and financial transactions that were part of an investigation of contacts between Trump and his associates with Russian officials. The Trump associates included his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to Times sources.
“The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit,” the paper reported. “The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.”
Representatives of the agencies involved declined to comment. Of the half-dozen current and former officials who confirmed the existence of the investigations, some said they were providing information because they feared the new administration would obstruct their efforts. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the cases.
Numerous news outlets, including The New York Times, have reported on the F.B.I. investigations into Mr. Trump’s advisers. BBC and then McClatchy revealed the existence of a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government.
Paul Manafort at GOP convention (NY Times pix)
4TH ST8 
Did Obama order the wire tap or did he simply exclaim: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?”
Did Trump hire russian prostitutes to pee on him while Russian security agents watched, and then agree that if he were elected he would remove all US sanctions from Russia because of their brutal invasion nd takeover of the Crimea, or did he just say “can someone get me a urinator”?
“WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.”
Now we can get back to finding out the extent to which The orange ball was corrupted by the Russians.
The real question, is the Trump effect moving towards uniting a divided Congress?
Strong article by Strobe Talbott on both sides of the Trump-Putin axis. Many of the moderate diplomats whose instincts were to “give Putin a chance” for far too long have come around to realizing what Putin really is, and that normal diplomatic means are not sufficient for dealing with his threat. For many on the left side of the US spectrum, both politicians and media, it took Trump and GOP embrace of Putin to draw their attention. Better late than never, but that domestic political partisanship plays such a role today in major national security issues is a serious concern.
Garry Kasparov, commenting on this story.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/putin-trump-russia-flynn-sessions-hack-kremlin/518412/
“Senator Cotton captures the point in a quotable quote: “If you want to know what a pro-Russia policy would look like, here are some elements of it. You’d slash defense spending. You’d slow down our nuclear modernization. You’d roll back missile defense systems. You would enter a one-sided nuclear control arms agreement. And you’d try to do everything you could to stop oil and gas production. That was Barack Obama’s policy for eight years. That’s not Donald Trump’s policy.”
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Without a doubt there was wire tapping and an investigation. I doubt Obama actually ‘had to order it’, but that he was advised that it was taking place.
Unless they have any significant evidence that anyone was colluding with Russians this should go down as the biggest interference by a sitting president into a presidential election ever.
Well said HighFlyinBrien!
The Obama war room even rolled out Josh (not so) Earnest to bolster their Trump intelligence gathering “non denial denial” on ABC’s “This Week with A Former Clinton Chief of Staff (aka George Stephanopoulos)”…and got an answer Martha “Radish” wasn’t looking for:
“RADDATZ: We know about that denial from President Obama and the law as well. As President Obama’s former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, your former colleague, tweeted: “I’d be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the White House ordered it.”
Can you categorically deny that the Obama Justice Department did not seek and obtain a FISA court order?
EARNEST: What I can categorically deny, Martha, is that the White House was at all involved in directing or interfering or influencing an FBI investigation of any sort.
RADDATZ: That’s not what I’m asking. What I’m asking is, can you deny that the Obama Justice Department did not seek and obtain a FISA court-ordered wiretap of the Trump campaign?
EARNEST: It was a cardinal rule — here’s the simple answer to that question, is, Martha, I don’t know.”
From the same program this morning former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey:
RADDATZ: Given all these accusations, and you’re aware of the tweets that President Trump put out. And they were pretty definitive. Shouldn’t they want a special inquiry, a special prosecutor, an independent prosecutor to look into this?
MUKASEY: No. There’s nothing to prosecute. The only crime I that have heard about or seen of that was committed was committed by the Russians when they hacked the DNC. They hacked John Podesta, and they tried to hack the Republican National Committee. That’s the only crime that I’m aware of.
Now, the question is of course is why was it committed? Some people say it was committed to promote the election of Donald Trump. I happen to think that is ridiculous. Because at the time that it had happened, Donald Trump looked like a sure loser. And you’d have to believe that Vladimir Putin was an idiot trying to back a sure loser. I think much more likely he was trying to intimidate a sure winner, Secretary Clinton.
I really find all this amusing. According to the Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security
Release Date: October 7, 2016 and the National Association of Secretaries of State on September 26, 2016, and the Press Call on the Administrations Response to Russian Malicious Cyber Activity and Harassment September 26, 2016, the primary concern was that because of the theft of emails from the DNC and from Podesta, which were published by WikiLeaks, and supposedly directed by the Russian government, that somehow the Russians were going to be able to hack into individual state voting systems and alter the vote.
Well, if they did, as everyone seems so convinced of, and since Hillary won the most votes, by 3 million if I remember correctly, then the Russians changed the vote for her not Trump.
Also, doesn’t it seemed a tad contrived, since Wikileaks had been releasing all kinds of emails for forever, that somehow, by Oct. 7th, the Obama Administrations new intelligence pointed to the conclusion that they were now going to alter election votes…even though there was no intelligence that this had, could or would be done. Almost as if they pulled it out of thin air. Then…
in an article on Wednesday 23 November 2016 in an article in The Guardian, ” A growing number of academics and activists are calling for US authorities to fully audit or recount the 2016 presidential election vote in key battleground states, in case the results could have been skewed by foreign hackers.” even though she won the popular vote. And we know the outcome of these recounts: Trump got more votes.
It seems that from the very start all this russian hoopla was engineered to cast doubt, before the election in case Trump won, that he could have only succeeded because the Russians interfered.
Also, we shouldn’t forget about the Obama Administration successful coup of the U.S. election systems that came about on Jan 6, 2017. Jeh Johnson said:
“Citing increasingly sophisticated cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that’s “vital to our national interests,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Friday that he’s designating U.S. election systems critical infrastructure, a move that provides more federal help for state and local governments to keep their election systems safe from tampering.
“Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law,” Johnson said in a statement.
But, I haven’t read any report or seen any proof that there was any tampering with the election systems. Somehow this was motivated by a declassified U.S. intelligence report that said Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered” an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.
Washington post along with every MSM outfit wrote articles about this report, I quote from Washington Post’s article here:
By Greg Miller and Adam Entous January 6
“Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday.
The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscow’s role represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related espionage.”
and then they sum up the proof here, which I can’t believe anyone would fall for:
“The campaign initially sought to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, “denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and damage her expected presidency. But in time, Russia “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and repeatedly sought to artificially boost his election chances.”
“artificially boost his election chances”
“Russia “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump”
How is any of that election tampering. I remember when Obama in 2015 interfered in the election in Israel. From the Jerusalem Post – –
“The Obama presidential election team has set up camp in Tel Aviv with the mission to defeat Netanyahu in our upcoming election. The “Anyone but Bibi” mission is headed by Jeremy Bird, Obama’s National Field Director in his successful presidential campaigns.Under Bird, a group called “Victory 15” has been set up. It has recruited the young activists from Israel’s 2013 social protest movement and will man a massive social network and personal contact campaign to defeat Bibi. V15 is financed by an NGO called “One Voice” whose motto is to be “the voice of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians.” Research finds that One Voice is funded by John Kerry’s State Department.
One Voice was formed in 2003, its inaugural board of advisers included Gary Gladstein who used to be the chief operations officer of Soros Fund Management. As in George Soros.”
You guys are as good at prematurely dismissing these accusations as you were at jumping with both feet on every hare brained allegation that was made about Obama and Hillary. Partisanship rears its ugly head!
It is beyond all but the most gullible to believe that,more the first time in this country’s history I might add, a president, or even a candidate, for the presidency, makes clear his love for Russia, or the former Soviet Union. In fact, republicans in particular, but democrats as well, have made names, and secured many many votes, by labeling that country “the evil empire” and our enemy.
Orange ball however, and from the beginning made clear his admiration for a brutal Russian dictator, and a brutal regime that even republicans by and large understand remains a grave threat to this country.
In spite of this, the Trumpeteers are, in the words of the “Ghostbusters” “ready to believe him” when he says that all the so far proven disturbing at best, and illegal at worse, cooperation with that regime was….a creation of someone else
But, not even all of them believe that gob or crap.
“WASHINGTON – Dan Coats, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. intelligence community, said at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday that he believes Russia attempted to meddle in last year’s presidential race, putting him potentially at odds with the White House.
Russia “definitely did try to influence the campaign,” said Coats, who was nominated to head the Office of the Director of National intelligence, the nation’s top intelligence job.”
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/feb/28/dan-coats-nominee-to-be-top-intelligence-official-/
The only solution is to ignore the things bizarro orange man says going forward. It’s not fit to print.
Imagine it, actually ignoring someone spewing nonsense. I wonder how they would react?
The Times now says: “The Times has reported that several of Mr. Trump’s associates are being investigated for their connections with Russians and that law enforcement agencies have examined intercepted communications. It has not reported that those associates themselves have necessarily been wiretapped, but it has reported surveillance of Russians, which is commonplace.”
In fact the Jan. 19 story in the Times stated in the lede: “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.”
It did not say “who” was wiretapped.
But the next day the paper’s public editor reported: “But The Times knew several critical facts: the F.B.I. had a sophisticated investigation underway on Trump’s organization, possibly including FISA warrants. … At one point, the F.B.I. was so serious about its investigation into the server that it asked The Times to delay publication.”
A little walk down memory lane…
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/03/ask_james_rosen_and_angela_merkel_about_obama_spying.html
Trump White House Shopping For Technology to Plug Leaks
White House IT officials met with at least one private firm selling a network security system that would give administration officials control over how staffers use computers and cellphones to transmit sensitive information, according to people familiar with the matter.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/03/trump-white-house-shopping-for-technology-to-plug-leaks/
What are the odds they go with Kaspersky?
😉
We sure haven’t heard much from the Trumpeteers lately about the lies their president told have we?
Now, we’ve got plenty of “ah….well, Trumps campaign chairmen, (the guy Newt called the key to the entire election) Paul “Petrov” Mumford, really was here mostly to pass out flyers, so whether he had extensive, undisclosed, discussions with Russian agents and others, for which he was highly paid, doesn’t matter much.”
Oh, and, don’t worry to much about the latest report that shows more Trumpskiites associating and coordinating releases of information about the democratic nominee for president with Russian agents; that was probably just….ahhh a coincidence?
And Michael Flynn? Why worry about him, he’s not even part of Trumps apparatchiks anymore. Forget about him and the meetings he had with the Russians and the money they paid him before Trump changed his policies about those swell misunderstood guys.
Oh and, how about that Devin Nunes eh? Doing an investigation, supposedly, of Trump, then skulking off when peoples backs are turned to go talk to the guy who’s under investigation; sure don’t sound kosher to me but I’m sure it’s fine, and after all, he did apologize right? Just before, or just after, he categorically told everyone that Trump lied about the Obama Administration in another of his many heinous acts since carrying the electoral vote.
3 weeks of activity and…nothing.
Well, it’s just starting so you all can catch up.