Maggie's Farm

Sam L: Obama Admin Source Confirms Wiretapping Was Conducted

That's funny. You'll believe them as long as they confirm your biases.

mudbug: If Eric Holder said Obama had broken the law would you believe him?

We would certainly consider his statement seriously. However, context is everything.

The News Junkie: And what's so terrible about the Russkies anyway?

They're an autocratic regime that suppresses political opposition, and used cyber-espionage to interfere in the U.S. presidential election for the benefit of a candidate who then tilted U.S. foreign policy towards that regime at the expense of democratic allies.

LWS: Which sounds EXACTLY like what the OBAMA Administration did.

If you are referring to the supposed-tapping of Trump's phones, there is no evidence such occurred, and it if did, it would have required a court order based on probable cause.

A wiretap issued through the FISA court, which would have required probable cause.

mudbug: Nothing like that is alleged so it's likely the warrants were obtained fraudulently.

Heh. It's not as if Obama planted the taps himself, or went to the FISA court in person. There's an entire infrastructure involved in such an operation.

Accusing the former president of an extraordinary crime requires extraordinary evidence. Trump is perfectly suited to find such evidence without having to tweet his outrage from his porcelain throne in the wee hours.

LWS: Which will turn out to have been fabricated.

Will? We don't even know if the purported tapping occurred, or if there was a warrant, or who issued the warrant.

GoneWithTheWind: Interesting juxtaposition between the claim of contact with Russians by the Trump team ...

• We know that Russians hacked a major U.S. political party in order to interfere in the election in favor the opposing candidate.

• We know that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, worked with the Russian-allied Ukrainian president before his ouster. Manafort resigned after it was alleged he received large sums of off-the-books money.

• We know that the National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, lied about the nature of his contacts with the Russian government.

• We know that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was ‘less than fully truthful’ when testifying under oath about his contacts with the Russian government, such that he was forced to recuse himself from the investigation.

• We know that Trump called for the Russians to release hacked emails from Hillary Clinton.

• We know that Trump called for the imprisonment of his political opponent.

• We know Russian money flowed into the Trump organization in years past.

• We know that other members of Trump’s team had repeated contacts with the Russians during the campaign and transition.

• We know that Trump has refused to release his tax returns, and that there are a large number of potential and actual conflicts of interest.

• We know that Trump has spoken glowingly of the autocratic head of Russian’s government while disparaging the leaders of democratic allies in Europe.

• We know that Trump called members of the press “enemies of the people” for accurately reporting on the above.

While not sufficient to constitute proof of wrongdoing, it is certainly sufficient to justify a closer look.

GoneWithTheWind: and a possible illegal wiretap by the Obama team.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence of illegal wiretapping.