Category: Obama Wiretap

Trump: Don’t Blame Me When I Quote Fox News

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Donald Trump does not like taking responsibility for White House screw-ups. He’ll blame anyone else he can think of—even his friends at Fox News.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer set off an international incident when he suggested that British intelligence might have spied on Trump during the campaign in response to a request from President Barack Obama. Spicer made this remark while once again trying to defend his boss, who two weeks ago tweet-claimed—without offering any evidence—that Obama had “wiretapped” him at Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Since then the GOP chairs of the congressional intelligence committees (and many others) have declared there is no proof to back up Trump’s reckless charge, which apparently was based on a Breitbart news story that itself was based on a statement (or rant) by right-wing radio talker Mark Levin.

The obvious conclusion is that an angry Trump had tweeted out fake news falsely accusing his predecessor of criminal activity. But Spicer has continued to contend that Trump’s allegations had a factual basis of some sort. And at the Thursday briefing he cited Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano, who claimed on that network that Obama had used the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—the British NSA— to eavesdrop on Trump with “no American fingerprints on this.” (Napolitano is no credible source. Like Trump, he has appeared on the radio show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In 2010, Napolitano told Jones’ audience that it’s “hard for me to believe” that World Trade Center Building 7 “came down by itself” and that the 9/11 attacks “couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us.”)

Yet here was the White House depending upon a conspiracy theorist to charge that Obama enlisted the Brits to conduct illegal surveillance against Trump. The GCHQ went into a tizzy. Breaking with its tradition of almost always staying silent on public controversies, the British spy agency released a statement that said, No way! It called the allegation Spicer embraced “ridiculous.”  (British journalists were shocked to see any response from the super-secretive GCHQ.) And British officials told reporters they had privately received some form of apology from White House officials.

Yet on Friday afternoon, at a short press conference with German leader Angela Merkel, Trump indicated that he believed there was nothing to apologize for. Asked by a German reporter about the wiretapping allegation, he made a reference to “fake news” without addressing the matter. When a second German reporter pressed Trump on the issue, Trump first made a joke that he had something in common with Merkel. (The NSA had listened in on her cell phone.) Then he dismissed the significance of Spicer’s citation of the Fox News report: “We said nothing. All we did was quote…a talented lawyer on Fox.” The German reporter, Trump said, “shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Fox News, for its part, wasn’t sticking to Napolitano’s crazy story. Following the press conference, Fox anchor Shep Smith reported the network “has no evidence of any kind” to support the notion that Obama (with or without the Brits) had spied on Trump.

To sum up, the White House was citing phony information from Fox that Fox wouldn’t stand by. And now Trump was basically saying, You can’t hold me and my White House accountable for what we say. If someone says it on Fox News, that’s good enough for us. In other words, they report, we repeat.

This is a stunning statement and admission from a president: There is no need for me to confirm anything before tossing it out from the bully pulpit. It may not be a big news flash at this point, but Trump was eschewing any responsibility for White House statements. This is apparently Trump’s standard: If an assertion appears on Breitbart or on Fox News—if a conspiracy theory is spouted by a right-wing talk show—then it can be freely cited by the president of the United States without any consequence. With this stance, Trump has fully embraced his position as fake-newser-in-chief.

(h/t Mother Jones)

Asked For Wiretapping Proof, Trump Cites Reports That Don’t Prove His Claim

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Asked about his unsubstantiated claim that President Obama ordered wiretapping at Trump Tower, President Donald Trump said he relied on media reports for the assertion.

In an interview with Trump on Wednesday, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson asked the President how he originally learned the information that led to his charge. Trump tweeted on March 4 that he “just found out” that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped.’”

Trump referenced as evidence a New York Times article six weeks earlier, about Trump campaign affiliates who were reportedly under investigation for communicating with Russian officials. (Everyone mentioned in the story has denied wrongdoing.) He also said that Fox News’ Brett Baier had used the word “wiretapping” the day before his claim.

“I had been reading about things,” he told Carlson. “I read in, I think it was January 20, a New York Times article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term.”

“There were other things,” he continued. “I watched your friend Brett Baier the day previous, where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping. I said, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about.’ I’ve been seeing a lot of things. Now, for the most part, I’m not going to discuss it, because we have it before the committee and we will be submitting things before the committee very soon that hasn’t been submitted as of yet. But it’s potentially a very serious issue.”

It’s unclear which single committee Trump was referring to, as multiple are looking into his claim. The Republican chair and Democratic ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee both said Wednesday that they had so far seen no evidence to support Trump’s claim.

And the Times did not report that Trump Tower or Trump himself were under surveillance. The Times also did not report that President Obama was personally involved at all in the investigation of Trump’s affiliates, as Trump claimed.

On Friday, March 3, Fox’s Brett Baier asked House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) if he was concerned “that the Obama administration may have been surveilling members of the Trump campaign in a pretty detailed investigation during the election?”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Ryan responded.

Baier also referenced a “report,” seemingly from radio host Mark Levin and later amplified by Breitbart, that the Obama administration had twice requested a FISA warrant to monitor “communications involving” Trump, and specifically a server owned by Trump that Breitbart and others reported was located in Trump Tower. In fact, the server is operated by a company in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

“I’ve seen nothing of that. I’ve seen nothing come of that,” Ryan said.

Carlson asked Trump why he hadn’t, as President, simply asked intelligence officials directly for proof that Obama had directed surveillance on him.

“Because I don’t want to do anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency,” he said, before changing topics briefly. “You know, we have enough problems. And by the way, with the CIA, I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked and a lot of things taken. That was during the Obama years. That was not during us. That was during the Obama situation. Mike Pompeo is there now doing a fantastic job now.”

“But we will be submitting certain things and I will be perhaps speaking about this next week, but it’s right now before the committee and I think I want to leave it there,” he said. “I have a lot of confidence in the committee.”

“Why not wait to tweet about it until you can prove it?” Carlson asked. “Don’t you devalue your words when you can’t provide evidence?”

“Because the New York Times wrote about it,” Trump said. “Not that I respect the New York Times. I call it the failing New York Times. But they did write, on January 20, using the word ‘wiretap.’ Other people have come out with – ”

Carlson interrupted: “Right, but you’re the President! You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.”

“I do, I do, but I think that frankly we have a lot right now,” Trump said. “And I think if you watched the Brett Baier and what he was saying, and what he was talking about, and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it. And other people have mentioned it. But if you take a look at some of the things written about wiretapping and eavesdropping…”

“And don’t forget, when I say ‘wiretap,’ those words are in quotes,” he continued. “That really covers – because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing. But ‘wiretap’ covers a lot of different things. I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.”

In fact, the White House itself has brought up this point in recent days. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said during a press briefing Monday that Trump had told him to say as much during a conversation about his wiretapping charge.

“He said they were in quotes, it’s referring to surveillance overall, it was something that had been referred to in other reports,” Spicer said, explaining why Trump had used quotes around “wires tapped” and “wire tapping.” In two tweets, though, Trump omitted the quotes:

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Senate Intel Committee Very Strongly Rebukes Wiretapping, Wider Surveillance at Trump Tower

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Senate Intelligence Committee leaders released a joint statement Thursday saying that they have no reason to believe that President Donald Trump‘s wiretapping claims against former President Barack Obama are true.

“Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Virginia, said in the joint statement.

They both visited CIA headquarters last week and the two men have also met with FBI Director James Comey. Both men have been privy to relevant classified documents.

This statement comes on the heels of what House Intelligence Committee leaders concluded Wednesday.

In a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday, Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California, said, “We don’t have any evidence that that took place. … I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that there is “no basis” for President Trump’s accusations, adding that it “deeply concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis.”

The accusations from Trump against Obama first came in a series of tweets March 4.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump wrote.

In an interview with Fox News that aired Wednesday evening, Trump explained he didn’t necessarily mean wiretapping.

“When I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers — because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff — but that really covers surveillance and many other things,” Trump said.

Two out of Trump’s four March 4 tweets related to wiretapping included the phrase in quotes.

In the interview, Trump also said the sources of information behind his tweets stemmed from a Jan. 20 New York Times article and a Fox News report from anchor Bret Baier. However, neither the Times article nor the Fox News report said that Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower.

When asked why he didn’t reach out to intelligence agencies to gather evidence backing his allegations, President Trump said he didn’t want to do “anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency.”

Despite the growing chorus of voices saying that they haven’t found proof, Trump did not back down from his claims.

“I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks,” Trump told Fox News.

(h/t ABC News)

Republican Intel Chairman: No Evidence of Obama Wiretap of Trump Tower

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With threats of subpoenas and efforts to block a top Justice nominee, congressional leaders are ramping up pressure on the Justice Department and FBI to acknowledge whether there is any information to support President Trump’s widely disputed claim that the Obama administration wiretapped his New York offices in advance of the November election.

The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee told reporters Wednesday he has seen no evidence to support the claim.

“We don’t have any evidence that that took place,” California Rep. Devin Nunes said during a news conference at the Capitol. “I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”

Nunes said it was obvious that President Obama did not personally install listening devices in the building where Trump has offices and an apartment, so he said the committee has had to try to determine what the Trump did mean if his tweet could not be taken literally.

“If the White House or the president want to come out and clarify his statements more, it would probably, probably be helpful,” Nunes said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, indicated separately Wednesday that he has bipartisan support to seek subpoenas if FBI Director James Comey does not respond to Trump’s wiretap claims and outline the status of the bureau’s ongoing investigation into communications between Trump associates and Russian government officials.

“The bottom line is that a lot of Americans want to know what’s going on here,” Graham said at Senate hearing examining Russia’s efforts at undermining the U.S. political system and other democracies.

Graham said the FBI informed him late Wednesday that the bureau would be responding to lawmakers’ concerns in “a classified setting.”

If the request is not satisfied, Graham said there is Judiciary Committee support for issuing subpoenas to compel the information and to block the pending nomination of Rod Rosenstein, who is awaiting confirmation as the deputy attorney general.

Rosenstein’s position is especially crucial since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing the federal Russia inquiry after it was disclosed that the former Alabama senator — and Trump campaign adviser — had met twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the course of the general election campaign. Sessions did not disclose the meetings during his January confirmation hearings.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department, facing a separate deadline from the House Intelligence Committee to turn over information that might support Trump’s wiretap claims, asked for additional time to determine whether any information exists.

Nunes also said Wednesday he was demanding more answers from the intelligence community about efforts they make to prevent the release of the names of Americans who are caught on tape during surveillance of foreign officials.

He and Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is the ranking member of the panel, released a letter seeking answers about “unmasked” American identities by Friday. Nunes and Schiff said the committee would use its subpoena power if it does not get answers.

Comey and Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, will testify at a public hearing the Intelligence Committee will hold Monday, Nunes said. Another hearing will be held March 28 to hear from other witnesses.

Schiff said Comey would be asked publicly whether he has seen any evidence that substantiates Trump’s claim.

“It deeply concerns me that the president would make such an accusation without basis,” Schiff said.

He said it could be Trump was just reacting to something he saw on television, and the White House reaction has evolved over time.

“You can’t level an accusation of that type without retracting it or explaining just why it was done,” Schiff said. “I think there are, from a national security perspective, great concerns if the president is willing to state things like that without any basis, because the country needs to be able to rely on him, particularly if we have a crisis.

Trump sought to expand the definition of “wiretap” on Wednesday, telling a Fox News interviewer that it can mean a lot of different types of surveillance.

“But wiretap covers a lot of different things,” Trump told Fox’s Tucker Carlson. “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.”

Trump echoed his aides, who in recent days sought to expand the nature of Trump’s claims about Obama. While the president used the the term “wiretapping” in his March 4 tweets, spokesman Sean Spicer and other aides have said he was referring to “surveillance” in general.

On Wednesday, Spicer said Nunes said he has no evidence “at this time” and that a review is ongoing. “We’re still at the beginning stages of this,” Spicer said.

Spicer again said there was no connection between the Trump campaign and Russians who sought to hack the 2016 election. “There’s nothing there,” he said.

Shortly after Trump issued his wiretap claims in a series of tweets, Comey asked that Justice officials refute the president’s allegations. The Justice Department has not acted on that request. Separately, former director of national intelligence James Clapper has publicly denied that such surveillance of Trump Tower existed.

Also on Wednesday, Graham led a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism about how to keep Russians from interfering in future U.S. and European elections the way they did in the 2016 presidential election in America. The U.S. Intelligence Community issued a report in January concluding that the Russian government, at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin,  interfered in the election to try to help Trump and defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. The intelligence agencies also concluded that there was no evidence that the Russians tampered with the actual vote-tallying equipment.

Graham asked former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, whose country has been a victim of Russian hacking, what will happen if the U.S. “decided to forgive and forget”  Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.

“I believe, sir, it would encourage them to continue,” Ilves told Graham, who supports stronger U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Kenneth Wainstein, former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, said America can expect more cyber attacks aimed at interfering in U.S. elections — not just from Russia, but also from China, Iran and North Korea. He added that the U.S. government should consider a wide range of counter measures, including possibly “hacking back” against Russia and other nations to discourage them from interfering in U.S. elections.

“The threat is real,” he said.

(h/t USA Today)

Spicer: Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping

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The White House on Monday walked back a key point of President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegation that President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

Namely, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump wasn’t referring to wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping.

“I think there’s no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election,” Spicer said. “The President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities.”

Wiretapping is a narrowly defined surveillance activity that involves tapping into “a telephone or telegram wire in order to get information,” according to Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Spicer also said that Trump was referring to the Obama administration broadly — and not accusing Obama of personal involvement — when he tweeted that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” and accused Obama of being a “bad” or “sick guy.”

Spicer’s comments came on the same say as the deadline for the Justice Department to provide evidence to the House Intelligence Committee to back up Trump’s claim. The White House has so far refused to provide any evidence, and numerous former officials have denied the existence of any warrant to wiretap Trump Tower.

A week earlier, Spicer said Trump’s tweet “speaks for itself” and declined to provide any further explanation.

But Monday, Spicer was open to providing an interpretation for Trump’s tweet, saying the President told Spicer he was referring to means of surveillance beyond wiretapping in his tweets accusing Obama of doing just that.

But in each of the four tweets Trump fired off leveling the accusation, Trump referred specifically to phone tapping — and only used quotation marks in two of those.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” Trump said in his first tweet.

“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president?” he asked in the next.

Then, Trump tweeted that Obama “was tapping my phones in October” and had stooped low “to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process.”

But Spicer was not the only White House official to provide an alternative definition of the word “wiretap” despite Trump’s clear language.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway also addressed the wiretapping claims in an interview Sunday with the Bergen County Record, suggesting that other covert surveillance methods used by the CIA — as revealed by Wikileaks last week — could have been used in Trump Tower by the Obama administration.

“Do you know whether Trump Tower was wiretapped?” Bergen County Record columnist Mike Kelly asked Conway on Sunday.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway said, before suggesting that surveillance could take place through phones, TVs or “microwaves that turn into cameras.”

(h/t CNN)

Media

 

Conway Denies Suggesting Wider Surveillance of Trump

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White House adviser Kellyanne Conway is denying she suggested there was wider surveillance of President Donald Trump during the campaign, telling CNN Monday that her comments in a recent interview were taken out of context.

Sunday night, Conway appeared to expand Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower — a claim for which the President has not yet provided evidence — when she told the Bergen Record there could have been even wider spying on the Trump campaign, including the use of microwaves and television sets.

She did not provide any evidence for the claims.

Pressed about the comments by CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day,” Conway insisted she was not alleging actions by the Obama administration against the Trump campaign.

“I was answering a question about surveillance techniques generally,” she said.

When Cuomo pressed Conway on her answer — saying the question posed to her was “asked specifically” rather than generally — Conway shot back, countering that she was not responsible for providing proof of such surveillance.

“I’m not Inspector Gadget,” Conway said. “I don’t believe people are using the microwave to spy on the Trump campaign. However, I’m not in the job of having evidence; that’s what investigations are for.

Rather than alluding to wider surveillance of the Trump campaign, she said she was simply noting that there were news reports of advanced technologies that facilitate spying, an observation that had been warped thanks to people’s desires to “fit things how they want,” Conway said.

“I was talking about surveillance generally, but people are going to fit that the way they want to fit it,” Conway said.

When Cuomo brought up current controversy over Trump campaign officials’ relations with Russian politicians — “this seems to be a distraction” from that controversy, Cuomo said — Conway shot back.

“Maybe (it seems that way) to you and maybe to other people who don’t necessarily want Donald Trump to be president, but to other people, they see it as what it was — talking about news articles and talking about surveillance generally,” Conway answered.

“My questioning of you … is not about not wanting the President to be President,” Cuomo countered. “That’s unfair and it’s hurtful because you are feeding people’s animosity.”

“Feeding people’s animosity? Look over your shoulder,” Conway shot back. “I have 24/7 Secret Service protection because of people feeding people’s animosity. Don’t claim that privilege.”

(h/t CNN)

Media

Following Embarrassingly Bad Conway Interviews, Trump Slams ‘Rude’ Media

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President Donald Trump complained Monday morning that members of the media have treated officials from his administration rudely and advised the media that “you will do much better” if his officials are treated nicely.

Trump’s tweet, which did not reference any specific interactions between his administration and the media, followed interviews with counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway on four networks.

“It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives. Be nice, you will do much better!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” anchor George Stephanopoulos challenged Conway to explain an interview she gave to the Bergen (N.J.) Record, in which she seemingly suggested that former President Barack Obama had used household electronics such as televisions, computers and smart phones inside Trump’s Manhattan skyscraper to spy on him.

Asked for evidence to support such a claim, Conway said she had none and insisted that she had been speaking about surveillance broadly and not leveling a specific allegation against Obama.

In response to a similar line of questioning on CNN’s “New Day,” a program Conway and other White House officials have largely avoided in recent weeks, the counselor to the president said it was not her responsibility to provide evidence for an allegation.

“I’m not Inspector Gadget. I don’t believe people are using the microwave to spy on the Trump campaign,” she said. “However, I’m not in the job of having evidence. That’s what investigations are for.”

CNN host Chris Cuomo pushed Conway on the issue, asking her why she even raised the use of household gadgets for surveillance purposes if it were not her intention to imply that Obama had done just that inside Trump Tower. “The question is why were you doing that?” Cuomo said. “Because this goes to personal integrity.”

“I’m allowed to talk about things that are in the news without you questioning anybody’s personal integrity,” Conway replied. Accusations that she intentionally leveled an allegation against Obama without evidence have come from at least in part from “other people who don’t necessarily want Donald Trump to be the president,” she said.

And on NBC’s “Today,” Conway struggled to offer an explanation as to why the White House trumpeted a positive jobs report last week as an early success of the Trump administration when the president regularly derided similarly positive reports as phony and inaccurate when they were released during the Obama administration.

Conway’s justification for the discrepancy, under repeated questioning from “Today” hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie, was to say that “there’s a lot of fakery going on for people who were promised something that never came to be,” during the Obama administration, pointing to broken promises on health care as an example.

Lauer and Guthrie also sought answers from Conway about her Trump Tower surveillance remarks over the weekend, questions that prompted the counselor to the president to criticize the media for talking too much about Trump’s wiretapping claim.

“Can I stop you right there? The media did not bring up this topic. President Trump did,” Guthrie interjected as Conway sought to steer the conversation away from the president’s claim that Obama tapped his phones during the election. Conway replied that the media has focused too much on the wiretapping allegation and not enough on health care and other issues “that the American people also want to hear about.”

“All the more reason to question why it is that he would bring that up and then therefore throw the discussion” away from the White House’s preferred topics, Guthrie replied. “I mean, it isn’t like something a blogger wrote. It’s something the president of the United States accused his predecessor of tapping his phone.”

(h/t Politico)

Kellyanne Conway Suggests Even Wider Surveillance of Trump Campaign

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The White House is offering yet another wrinkle in its attempt to support President Trump’s allegation — unfounded, so far — that his campaign headquarters in Manhattan was wiretapped by the Obama administration. The latest comes from Trump’s senior counselor Kellyanne Conway.

She says the “surveillance” may be broader than even Trump suggested.

In a wide-ranging interview Sunday at her home in Alpine, where she lives with her husband — who was a possible nominee for U.S. solicitor general — and their four children, Conway, who managed Trump’s presidential campaign before taking the job as one of the president’s closest advisers, suggested that the alleged monitoring of activities at Trump’s campaign headquarters at Trump Tower in Manhattan may have involved far more than wiretapping.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway said as the Trump presidency marked its 50th day in office during the weekend. “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of ways.”

Conway went on to say that the monitoring could be done with “microwaves that turn into cameras,” adding: “We know this is a fact of modern life.”

Conway did not offer any evidence to back up her claim. But her remarks are significant — and potentially explosive — because they come amid a request by the House Intelligence Committee for the White House to turn over any evidence by Monday that the phones at Trump Tower were tapped as part of what the president claims to be a secret plot by the Obama administration to monitor his campaign.

The White House has not said whether it will provide any corroborative support to back up the president’s claim of the alleged wiretapping. The allegation came to light nine days ago when Trump wrote in an early-morning Twitter message that he “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.”

Trump did not offer any evidence in his original Twitter message. And while criticism mounted in the following days that Trump may have overreached, neither he nor the White House provided any means to verify the claim. Indeed, the wiretapping claims have dominated much of the discourse in Washington, often overshadowing the president’s attempt to promote changes in the Affordable Care Act and institute new immigration regulations.

Now comes Conway’s insinuation of a much broader surveillance plan against Trump. Her suggestion, while further stirring up the debate, appears to indicate that the White House does not plan to back down from Trump’s original Twitter claim in spite of strong assertions that it is not true from the U.S. intelligence community as well as from former president Barack Obama himself and members of his inner circle.

In the interview, Conway reiterated the request by the White House that the allegations of wiretapping  — and what she hinted might be other forms of surveillance — should be wrapped into a Congressional investigation into whether Russian intelligence operatives tried to influence the outcome of last November’s election.“What the president has asked is for the investigation into surveillance to be included into the ongoing intelligence investigations in the House and Senate,” she said.

The strategy of dueling inquiries — along with Conway’s suggestion of even broader surveillance by the Obama administration besides wiretapping — certainly complicates any investigation that involves Russia. But it may also confuse the issue.

While Conway seemed to call for a closer look into the so-far unfounded allegations of wiretapping by so-far unnamed members of the Obama administration, she also was dismissive of the extent and impact of the alleged Russian scheme. The Russian attempt to hack into computers within the Republican and Democratic campaign organizations is largely not disputed within the U.S. intelligence community.  What is disputed is whether the Russian scheme had any impact on the outcome of the election.

Conway’s remarks, however, may complicate the matter in other unforeseen ways.

She claimed in the interview that Democrats who called for a deeper investigation of the alleged Russian links – while also ignoring Trump’s claim of wiretapping by Obama — were really trying to undermine the Trump presidency. “The investigation is about a bunch of people who can’t believe that Hillary Clinton lost the election,” Conway said, her voice rising when asked about the possibility that Russian operatives may have helped to defeat Clinton and insure that Trump won.

“I was the campaign manager,” Conway added. “I was there every day and every night. I talked to people in Macomb County, Michigan, not in Moscow.”

She said that “this whole conspiracy” is a “waste of people’s oxygen, and air and resources and time when we could be helping those who are hungry, who need health care, who are in poverty, who need tax relief, entrepreneurs who want to get off the ground.”

In the interview, Conway addressed a variety of topics, including Trump’s efforts to assemble a coalition of support for his plan to revamp the Affordable Care Act, and her belief that Gov. Chris Christie may eventually join the Trump administration in some capacity, perhaps not for several more years, however. Conway even noted that Christie had come to her home recently to discuss his effort to improve services for drug addicts.

“The president likes Governor Christie a lot,” Conway said. “They talk all the time.”

But at various points, she continued to return to a seeming favorite topic — that Democratic critics of Trump are incapable of accepting the fact that he was able to defeat Hillary Clinton.

“They haven’t gotten over it,” Conway said, noting that she found many Democrats still working through “the stages of grief,” which range from anger to disbelief and, finally, acceptance of a loss.

“I know they’re not in acceptance,” Conway said. “That’s too bad for the country. The campaign is over. Now it’s time to govern.”

It’s an understandable — even laudable — suggestion that the opposing sides in Washington should stop fighting. But as Conway concedes, governing and the more difficult task of finding common ground among political adversaries is difficult amid allegations of a complicated plot involving Russia.

“It’s a big agenda,” Conway said of Trump’s first 50 days in the White House. “It’s very ambitious. And it’s very Trumpian.”

But that agenda still seems to keeps tripping over the election itself — and the questions about it.

(h/t USA Today)

Media

White House Rejects FBI’s Denial Of Trump’s Wiretapping Claims

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President Donald Trump’s administration continues to insist that former President Barack Obama ordered Trump Tower to be wiretapped during the presidential campaign, rejecting FBI Director James Comey’s denial of such activity despite not providing evidence to back up its claims.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday whether Trump accepts Comey’s reported request for the Department of Justice to “publicly reject” the president’s unfounded statement.

“No, I don’t think he does,” she replied.

Although he didn’t provide any evidence, Trump claimed over the weekend that Obama ordered wiretapping of his communications last year during his presidential campaign. On Sunday, Sanders even called for an investigation into the matter.

Obama, as well as numerous U.S. intelligence officials, have denied the allegation. James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, said Sunday that “there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect, at the time, as a candidate or against his campaign.” He also denied that the FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court warrant to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged contact with Russian officials.

Later that day, The New York Times and other outlets confirmed that Comey told DOJ officials to “publicly reject” Trump’s claim, reportedly saying it was “false and must be corrected.”

The only evidence that the Trump administration has offered are reports from right-wing news sites, maintaining a pattern of spreading unfounded conspiracy theories.

Yet Trump’s team continued to dig into the claims on Monday, while still providing no definitive proof.

“This is a storyline that has been reported by quite a few outlets,” Sanders said Monday, citing mainstream outlets that have reported on the claims but have found no evidence to support them.

Stephanopoulos repeatedly pressed her for evidence, but she had none.
Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, insisted on Fox News that Trump has “information and intelligence” to back up his claims.

“He’s the president of the United States,” she said. “He has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not, and that’s the way it should be.”

(h/t Huffington Post)

Media

Trump Wants Congressional Probe of Evidence-Free Claims About Obama

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President Trump called Sunday for a congressional investigation of his claims that predecessor Barack Obama had him wiretapped during last year’s election  —  while critics accused Trump of trying to distract people from an investigation into his own relationship with Russia.

“Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement a day after Trump accused Obama — without evidence — of having Trump Tower in New York wiretapped in connection with an investigation of Russia.

Trump is “requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016,” Spicer said.

While Trump repeatedly tweeted about Obama during the weekend, Spicer’s statement said “neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted.”

A spokesman for Obama said Trump’s claim is false, and noted that presidents do not have the legal authority to authorize wiretaps in any case.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Trump is making false claims against Obama in order to distract attention from investigations into possible contacts among Trump, his associates, and Russians involved in a plan to hack Democratic officials during last year’s election.

Again calling for an outside investigation into Trump and Russia, Pelosi told CNN’s State of the Union: “What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?”

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said it “will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party’s campaign officials or surrogates” as part of its overall probe into Russian intelligence activities. Nunes said, “we will continue to investigate this issue if the evidence warrants it.”

There is no evidence Trump or his aides were the subjects of surveillance during last year’s election,

Any kind of wiretap in connection with an investigation of Russia would have to be approved by a special court acting under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That law, passed in 1978 to reform the excesses of intelligence surveillance during the Richard Nixon administration and earlier presidencies, requires law enforcement to obtain an order from a special court of federal judges before they conduct telephone surveillance on people in the United States.

James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence last year, told NBC’s Meet The Press that to his knowledge there was no FISA court order regarding Trump Tower.

Clapper also said he saw no evidence of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Hours before the White House call for a congressional investigation, Trump continued his extraordinary and unprecedented public attack on his predecessor, tweeting about Obama’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Who was it that secretly said to Russian President, “Tell Vladimir that after the election I’ll have more flexibility?” Trump said.

Obama, who denied authorizing wiretaps on anybody and would be prevented by law from doing so in any case, did make the “flexibility” comment during a discussion with then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ahead of the 2012 election. It came in connection with talks over a proposed missile defense system.

The attacks on Obama come amid investigations of any contacts between Trump, his associates and Russians who may have been involved in efforts to influence last year’s presidential election.

In addition to the crack at Obama, Trump criticized the investigation into the hacking of Democratic National Committee officials involved in the 2016 election. “Is it true the DNC would not allow the FBI access to check server or other equipment after learning it was hacked?” Trump said. “Can that be possible?”

During his Saturday tweet storm, Trump said of the previous president: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

McCarthyism is a reference to the anti-communist crusades of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican who led a series of investigations about alleged communist influence in the U.S. government. He was eventually censured by the Senate in 1954 and died from alcoholism-related problems in 1957.

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, speaking on ABC’s This Week, said the president believes an investigation of his predecessor’s actions is warranted. “All we’re saying is let’s take a closer look,” Sanders said. “Let’s look into this.”

Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said the last administration had a “cardinal rule” that “no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.”

As a result, Lewis said, “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

Trump’s claims about wiretapping inspired more calls for a special prosecutor investigation of Russian involvement in last year’s election,  one that would include the president and campaign associates.

The FBI and various congressional committees are already looking into the Russians’ election role.

As investigations proceed and revelations mount, expect Trump to continue to make unfounded allegations about his opponents, some Democrats said. “As the Russia investigation gets closer and closer to Trump, he’s going to promote more conspiracy theories, not less,” said Democratic political strategist Jesse Ferguson.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, stung by disclosures he met with the Russian ambassador to the United States last year, announced last week he would recuse himself from any investigation involving the Trump campaign in which he worked.

Trump criticized Sessions’ decision, and said his critics are engaged in a “witch hunt” over Russia — a group in which he presumably includes Obama.

Certainly presidents have had disputes with each other throughout American history, from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to Lyndon Johnson and Nixon. But the public nature of Trump’s accusations against Obama may well be unprecedented.

Historian Joshua Zeitz said Trump appears to be engaged in a “somewhat calculated play” to keep his Republican base behind him, but that can be “a dangerous game.”

In previous presidential rivalries, Zeitz said, “the new president was wildly more popular than the former president” and that is “not the case today. In fact, quite the opposite.”

(h/t USA Today)

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