He's trying to make this a personal issue, give his folks a target for their rage. Hence, Obama.
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The White House undoubtedly has its fingerprints all over instances where US citizens were surveilled. It's not going to take much to blur the lines between ordered/instructed/advocated for/reviewed a request for, especially if evidence is unearthed which in any way exposes that the White House was involved in 'wiretapping' Trump Tower - even if by virtue of referral to a court or security agency.
Quietly monitoring the opposition during election season using the resources of the highest office in the land - even if for all of the right reasons - is going to be hugely controversial no matter how you attempt to slice and dice it.Quote:
Funny that your first move is to say that this is going to somehow come back and bite OBAMA, though. I mean, if the FBI asked for and got a FISC warrant against someone in Trump Tower (*coughManafort*), I'm not sure it's the 44th President who is the likeliest to be lawyering up.
Fascinating that an argument could be made that it's OK for a sitting president to spy on the opposing parties presidential candidate. Partisanship has risen to all new levels.
Because it's still classified.
Which is a exactly what the declassified report says. You're playing kind of a disingenuous game here.
If you want to dispute to conclusions in the report w/r/t motive, feel free. They're much more subjective and involve interpretation and speculation. Disagree away.
If you don't trust the voluminous reporting that Russia was responsible, going all the way back to the FBI proactively contacting the DNC at the VERY beginning, concerned that their system was under attack--specifically by a specific group of Russian state actors--I don't know what to tell you.
As to what everyone is concerned about? I think it's safest and most prudent to understand what's already happened before speculating what else we might have to be concerned about.
But if you think it's nbd for an adversarial foreign power to have taken criminal actions to attempt to manipulate the outcome of our election, possibly with the collusion of personnel from one of the election campaigns, I'm not really sure what to say.
This presidency is going to wear me out. Smh. Can't we just have a bit of calm for a day or two?
Look, if the White House ordered surveillance of the Trump org, that's transparently, patently illegal. That's why I'm pretty content to assume it didn't happen. OTOH, that seems to be what you're hinting at.
If the FBI were investigating shady Russian activity and got a FISA warrant to monitor something at TT, it was because they were judged to have probable cause. What's the transgression there? FISA warrants are narrow and the PC bar is high. So, again, it seems odd that you'd assume that it's more likely to be Obama who has something to worry about.
Sen. Ben Sasse's statement:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6GpNHOWYAEzyIU.jpg
This is an informative, non-sensationalist primer on the legal side:
https://www.justsecurity.org/38347/tapping-trump/
It's pretty easy to see how this is gonna go, just by following righty media: "the FBI is investigating Trump's campaign" is going to turn into "Obama was going full Nixon on Trump zomg investigate immediately." See, America, THIS is worth investigating.