Spying on Trump Tower would fit in with Obama’s m.o.
This Boston Herald article points out that the FISA-spying accusation Trump has leveled at Obama fits in quite nicely with a pattern the Obama administration had demonstrated (although I want to emphasize that that doesn’t mean the accusations are true):
The Democrats want you to think this is a crazy conspiracy theory for an unhinged tweeting president.
But Obama has a rich legacy of using the federal government as a political weapon and it would be foolish to think he suddenly started restraining himself, when he was never held to account by either the media or Democrats in power.
Remember, Obama’s Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the private phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters. It was pure spying.
Fox News reporter James Rosen and his family were wiretapped.
Former CBS news reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked by the government.
Add to these incidents the harassment of conservative 501(c)(4) organizations by Obama’s IRS, and the mercenary nature of the Obama administration reveals itself.
We’re told Obama administration officials went to the FISA Court twice last year for warrants to conduct electronic surveillance on candidate Trump. Why?
The DNC leaks show that DNC staffers were formulating “Russia” attacks on Trump as far back as last April, with one email between two committee members reading “the pro-Russia stuff ties in pretty well to idea that Trump is too friendly with Putin/weak on Russia.”
Before Obama became president, he lacked the governmental means to spy on anyone. But he had some rather curious ways of dealing with political opponents even back then. They tended to involve using the law—or information obtained in court proceedings—against them, with the assistance of his friends in the press. I have discussed these incidents before, in particular when Obama was first running for the presidency in 2008. If you’ve forgotten, or are unfamiliar with the tactics involved, please read this. Pay particular attention to what happened to Blair Hull and Jack Ryan. Then add that to the behavior described in that Herald article.
So, who’s telling the truth now? Obama, who would have little hesitation to do exactly as alleged, if he thought he could get away with it? Or Trump, with his history of intemperate accusations (if you doubt me, recall the flap over his statements about Cruz’s father and Oswald)?
Darned if I know. And I think most of the people who say they know are just guessing.
“Obama’s spokesman issued a statement this weekend, declaring, “Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.” A sentence carefully crafted with the precision of someone battening down the legal hatches.”
White House official never ordered …
Reminds me of another famous Democrat personage still highly esteemed by the left; who swore up and down that,
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never.” Honest Bill Clinton.
No, he just shoved his —- in her mouth and a cigar up her ___ and ej—–ated in her face; in the Oval Office. But why no, he most certainly never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.
Lawfare has become another of the MOs that the left and MSM use repeatedly to move their agenda forward. By lawfare, I mean using carefully lawyered statements to deceive and dissemble. Bill O’Reilly calls it spin and he claims to have a “No Spin Zone” on his show. But he gets spun by the lefty focus group tested talking points all the time. It works, that’s why they do it.
I watched Mark Levin go through a nine point explanation of all the articles (many by liberal media) that spells out the circumstantial evidence for the FISA Court ordered wiretap on Trump Tower. It could all be innuendo and rumor as FISA Court orders are supposed to be need to know only. Surely, if true, someone with a very high security classification is leaking.
I give it the same credence as I do that the Russians hacked the DNC and Podesta in collusion with the Trump campaign. Not much. Show us the evidence!
There is precedent for Leftists baby hunts and a distinct lack of probable cause, let a lone evidence, to support their allegations.
One of the things that bothered me about the original FISA story was this- I kept wondering how one could be so stupid as to start electronic surveillance of the opposing party’s nominee or his staff. It really is a level different than wiretapping some reporters from an unfriendly news organization. However, on thinking about, if the October FISA request was indeed granted, one might suppose that they did it so that after Hillary was elected, they could use the intelligence to shut up the sore-loser Trump supporters, or to shut down any attempt at litigating the election afterwards.
After November 8th, however, things get sticky. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Russian hacking the election angle was suddenly elevated from literally nothing to the only story the Democrats want to talk about. It really does seem like a story created to cover up something else, or at least give post hoc justification for something done unethically.
“Darned if I know. And I think most of the people who say they know are just guessing.”
Exactly what I was thinking when I first heard this report.
And, I suspect that we will never know the truth because the news media can’t be trusted either.
This does fit with bho’s MO. He has gotten away with his Chicago Way dirty business for decades now. The msm and his other running dog lackeys will cover for him and orchestrate smoke and mirrors campaigns to obstruct. If this is what it appears to be (not saying that it is); the DOJ needs to be purged asap and a thorough investigation made to find all the dirty laundry.
Destroy bho’s “legacy” and his public persona and the demcrats will spend a decade or two in the wilderness. Obama is all they have.
Remember all the fuss about Bush’s grades at Yale and it turned out he was a C+ student — better, though not terrifically so, than “Do you know who I AM?” John Kerry.
Will we ever know Obama’s SAT scores or grades? No MSM journalist I’m aware of has ever expressed the tiniest smidgeon of curiosity here, and when I brought this item up to two I’ve known for a long time at first they denied these were unknown…. then moved right along, nope, nothing, no doubts on display.
Likewise neither (separately, they don’t know each other) would admit to any doubts about Obama deciding to help knock over Libya without going to Congress or discussing it publicly with anyone. If GWB had done this they would have lost their minds and they wouldn’t even own up to this.
Obama is “Guilty, guilty, guilty!” as the Megaphone Mark character in Doonesbury said of John Mitchell during Watergate.
That Doonesbury strip was censored by many papers including WaPo.
The Post managing editor Howard Simons’s explanation: “If anyone is going to find any defendant guilty, it’s going to be the due process of justice, not a comic strip artist. We cannot have one standard for the news pages and another for the comics.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2014/04/26/41-years-later-the-post-publishes-spiked-doonesbury-watergate-comic-for-the-first-time-heres-why/
O halcyon days!
‘Darned if I know.’
If Trump was a normal human being, I would side with him since he has little to gain at this point. However, given his history of unhinged accusations, the likelihood is probably closer to 50:50.
I think the Democrats are correct in their contention that the election was “hacked”. However, it wasn’t by the Boogeyman Russians. BHO hacked the election and HRC STILL lost.
President Trump refuses to be cowed by these losers. My admiration of him grows by the day.
How everyone can be right, and how it depends on what the meaning of “wiretapping” is.
You have to read the whole thing to follow the logic, but it’s worth it.
http://libertyunyielding.com/2017/03/06/back-door-trump-clapper-comey-right-wiretapping-trump-tower/
The ‘back door’: How Trump, Clapper, and Comey could all be right about ‘wiretapping’ Trump Tower
By J.E. Dyer March 6, 2017
This is just for fun.
http://libertyunyielding.com/2017/03/07/short-circuit-trump-hacks-deep-state/
And it looks like either Dyer reads Dilbert or vice versa.
Or great minds think alike. Well, devious minds, anyway.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158110404781/wiretapping-word-thinking
“So, who’s telling the truth now?” – Neo
Who knows?
We have to remember that the big picture is to drive support for trump and his policies (would hope they be conservative ones, but doubtful on several counts).
So, the question is NOT so much “who is telling the truth now?”.
It is, does this narrative build support, or does it distract from such?
And, is it really trump’s best use of media attention and focus of his (and the WH’s) time?
Bottom line, if one steps away from the blue vs red for a moment, they will see that leaving an accusation of that magnitude hang in the air without much support behind it is far from convincing.
Suspicion of how obama COULD do it based on past analogues is hardly enough to tilt the scale for anyone (outside of trump’s core support), as trump has “cried wolf” just too many times.
It is more likely to hurt trump’s credibility, unless he were to come to the table with something more than mere accusation.
And, if the suspicion is that obama is capable of abusing his power in this way, what makes us think the broader public won’t see any follow on to this as nothing more than trump doing the same, but in the opposite direction?
Credibility and integrity are alloyed together.
AFAICTell, trump hasn’t been sowing either in any significant amounts outside his core support.
We’ll see.