American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS (Archive)

[direwolf]

The Obama camp just responded.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/04/trump...-election.html

In a statement, Kevin Lewis, a spokesperson for Obama, rejected Trump's assertion. "A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice," he said.

"As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," he added.

[DuffMan]

I like this one better


Ben Rhodes‏ @brhodes

No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you.

[calf]

If the wiretaps existed...Is this not an admission by Trump that conversations with Russia happened?

[direwolf]

Originally Posted by calf

If the wiretaps existed...Is this not an admission by Trump that conversations with Russia happened?

What's funny is that he probably tweeted this crap out in the hopes that it would distract everyone from the Russia thing, and yet if he was indeed being surveilled by the Intelligence community, it's safe to assume that Russia was very likely the reason. Now this will be the leading story in the news cycle for at least a couple of days, and it all ties in to Russia.

[Flash Walken]

If there were wiretaps on Trump or campaign officials, it would signal the Justice department had sufficient evidence for probable cause and a judge on a FISA court agreed.

It would also be classified information that he was now leaking publicly

[Senator Clay Davis]

Not sure yet who of Kellyanne, Spicer, Reince or Stephen Miller is being trotted out to defend Trump on the shows tomorrow, but it'll be fun to watch regardless who it is.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by calf

If the wiretaps existed...Is this not an admission by Trump that conversations with Russia happened?

That's what's funny about this whole thing. Trump keeps simultaneously complaining about leaks and denying that the things being leaked are true.

He can't have it both ways. If something isn't true, then it's not a leak.

[edslunch]

Regardless whether there is anything to the Russian story it's delicious to see this administration subjected to the same sort of hounding that Trump and the GOP gave to Obama and the dems

[Robo]

This is unreal lol

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

That's what's funny about this whole thing. Trump keeps simultaneously complaining about leaks and denying that the things being leaked are true.

He can't have it both ways. If something isn't true, then it's not a leak.

And he whines and complains about fake media, and then repeats/tweets fake news stories.
What a moron.

[station]

I love the tweet comparing this to Watergate. I wonder, in Trump's mind, if he thinks he is Nixon or Obama is Nixon.

[MRCboicgy]

So glad SNL is back on tonight.

[Minnie]

Originally Posted by calf

If the wiretaps existed...Is this not an admission by Trump that conversations with Russia happened?

Every time I hear him whine about this and throw out baseless accusations at Obama et al, all I hear in my head is this odd sort of similiarity to OJ's "IF I did it, this is how it would have happened."

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

If there were wiretaps on Trump or campaign officials, it would signal the Justice department had sufficient evidence for probable cause and a judge on a FISA court agreed.

It would also be classified information that he was now leaking publicly

Trump wiretapping claims are ridiculous and horrible choice for him to respond to. If he was not being wiretapped, he looks like a paranoid and a crackpot Breitbart reader. If he was being wiretapped, it could only have been authorized through a FISA court judge as you suggest.

So either he comes off as a bumbling conspiracy crackpot or there was enough evidence of foreign interference that this would have been authorized in the first place. i.e. Russia connections. Idiocy or self incrimination. Probably quite a bit of both in Trump's case

[direwolf]

Schwarzenegger responds to Trump's tweet this morning.

[driveway]

This wiretapping thing leads directly to Russia. This paragraph is from The Guardian's article about the Trump "dossier" from back in January.

[quote]
The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.[\quote]

[photon]

IF IN FACT Trump Tower was wiretapped during the 2016 presidential campaign, as President Trump claimed in several tweets Saturday morning, he can do much more than say so on twitter: Presidents have the power to declassify anything at any time, so Trump could immediately make public any government records of such surveillance.

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/04/...hat-right-now/

[edslunch]

This could get really messy. It could be completely legal but still politically motivated. Ironically this applies both to the alleged Russian connection and the wiretapping.

[photon]

From the NYT article:

But a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s chief counsel, was working to secure access to what Mr. McGahn believed to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Mr. Trump and his associates.

The official offered no evidence to support the notion that such an order exists. It would be a highly unusual breach of the Justice Department’s traditional independence on law enforcement matters for the White House to order it to turn over such an investigative document.

Any request for information from a top White House official about a continuing investigation would be a stunning departure from protocols intended to insulate the F.B.I. from political pressure. It would be even more surprising for the White House to seek information about a case directly involving the president or his advisers, as does the case involving the Russia contacts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/u...ap-phones.html

----

An interesting blog post that tries to make sense of the timelines and reporting involved around the wiretapping stuff, the Brietbart article and Trump's tweets about it.

A story published in Steve Bannon’s rag, Breitbart, got circulated around the White House this morning like some President’s Daily Conspiracy, sending President Trump off on a rant attacking the counterintelligence investigation into his aides’ (and possibly his own) ties with Russia.

Let me unpack it.

The story basically captures a narrative Mark Levin rolled out Thursday night (that is, right after Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russian hack investigation), which basically lards out the story of counterintelligence intercepts mostly targeting Russians, to suggest Jeff Sessions was brought down in an invented coup.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/03/0...otus-go-crazy/

[Lanny_McDonald]

IF, and I will say IF, Trump was caught in a wire tap (which he essentially admits he was) it was not a result of a wire tap on Trump, but a wire tap on a foreign interest, which Trump was speaking to!

Trump is dirty. He has essentially admitted as much. Impeach already.