While Trumpinistas are breathlessly proclaiming “he must have had some reason” for claiming that his predecessor President Obama had wiretapped him, despite denials by James Clapper and Jim Comey, a former NSA analyst John Schindler says the entire idea is “Kooky.”
Let’s be perfectly clear here: The scenario painted by President Trump of his predecessor tasking the IC with wiretapping Trump Tower simply could not have happened without a far-reaching and highly illegal conspiracy involving the White House and several of our spy agencies, above all the National Security Agency,” Schindler wrote. “My friends still at NSA, where I served as the technical director of the Agency’s biggest operational division, have told me without exception that Trump’s accusation is wholly false, a kooky fantasy.”
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“In the first place, the White House doesn’t ask for such wiretaps, ever; such requests come directly from NSA, the FBI, or the Justice Department. Involvement of any White House in such highly classified requests would immediately set off enormous red flags in the IC and DoJ due to their glaringly political—and therefore illegal—aim,” he explained.
“Having worked with a lot of FISA collection during my time in the spy business, I can state without reservation that President Trump’s accusations are so inherently implausible as to render them an absurdity” Schindler continued. “He needs to offer hard evidence for such incendiary claims or back down publicly, preferably with an apology to his predecessor, whom he has maligned without cause.”
Yeah, I’m thinking an apology is not forthcoming.
Not when you have Trumpsters going on the TV and saying ridiculous bullcrap like this.
When asked by Bolduan why the president doesn’t just declassify any FISA warrants that were issued to monitor him under President Obama, Kremer broke off into a non-sequitur about Trump doing things on his own schedule.
“One thing we’ve seen is Donald Trump operates on Donald Trump time,” said Kremer. “And he doesn’t necessarily go to the media, he’ll go around the media through Twitter or whatever. I‘m sure when he’s ready to put that out there, we will hear from it.”
Earlier in the segment, Democratic strategist Paul Begala noted that President Trump has regularly engaged in baseless conspiracy theories about his political rivals, including conspiracies about President Obama’s birth certificate, Sen. Ted Cruz’s father being involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, and three million “illegal” voters that supposedly cost him the popular vote win against Hillary Clinton.
“He’s subscribed to every batty conspiracy theory,” Begala said, while dismissing the president’s latest ramblings as completely fact free.
One other thing the person alleges is that the wiretap story is plausible because of IRS scandal where “no one was held accountable.’ Yeah, well that’s because there was no scandal or bias against conservatives in that case.
"None of these (15) witnesses reported any political motivation or White House involvement," Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said in releasing the memo.
More than two months ago, an IRS official publicly apologized for the IRS giving extra scrutiny to conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status, including using key words like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" to flag applications.
One IRS official quoted in Cummings' memo is described as a Republican IRS tax law specialist working in Washington.
Asked by congressional investigators if there was any evidence of political targeting by President Barack Obama, the official said, "That's kind of laughable that people think that ... unfortunately, Cincinnati didn't have enough guidance."
Furthermore the list of priorities for approval of 501-c3 organizations didn’t include “liberal” groups because it was an update to the existing list which already included them. The emergence of hundreds of applications by Tea Party groups is what sparked this update, not any particular bias against them.
So that bogus claim isn’t a valid justification for this bogus claim.
When Bolduan pushes back on the October warrant being related to bank transactions — and not phone calls — Bremer who had previously been citing exacting details about the FISA warrants suddenly doesn’t know anything.
“It doesn’t matter, it could be voice over IP, I don’t know… whether it’s computers, phone, whatever it is, they were granted access in October”
Yes, actually they were — to monitor communications between a Russian Alfa bank and a Trump email server in Philadelphia which had nothing to do with phone calls in Trump Tower. What they apparently found on the server was nothing.
In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin.
F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 “look-up” messages — a first step for one system’s computers to talk to another — to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.
These people should be ashamed of themselves.