Actually no, we can’t actually conclude that. i think it’s is a real possibility that this is true, but to understand how, you have to understand a little about how wiretapping and warrants work. Let’s say the DEA is going after some drug kingpin, and they’ve got a little bit of proof but not enough. They go to a judge and they get a warrant and tap the kingpin’s phone. Thing is, the DEA doesn’t just get to listen in to one side, they get to listen to calls coming and going from the kingpin. And if they find that there are new incidents of suspicious activity they learn about by listening to all those conversations, they can go back and get the warrant expanded to include everyone involved in those conversations. Ever watch The Wire? It’s like that.
So in this scenario, Russia is the kingpin, and people in the Trump campaign are the “other suspicious callers” that got sucked in. I think what started as a wiretap related to Russian hacking of the US election probably led back to “Trump Tower.” Maybe it was voice calls, maybe just data. But something dirty led back to the campaign, and that ended up in a report that Trump saw. Trump is trying to turn this in to a political persecution by the Obama administration, but actually this is just another indication that there was criminal activity by someone in the Trump campaign, maybe even at the highest level.
…or, yeah, he could be batshit crazy. One does not, however, preclude the other.
Levin was then featured on Breitbart, and Trump is a Breitbart fan:
Trump and his fans are idiots. There is simply zero ability to dispute that. It’s gotten so bad that with the people I know here that they have gone gloriously silent instead of spewing a mixture of racism and Randian platitudes.
Indeed, partly because it has no prying co-op board, Trump Tower in New York has received press attention for including among its many honest residents tax-dodgers, bribers, arms dealers, convicted cocaine traffickers, and corrupt former FIFA officials.
One typical example involves the alleged Russian mobster Anatoly Golubchik, who went to prison in 2014 for running an illegal gambling ring out of Trump Tower—not only the headquarters of the Trump Organization but also the former headquarters of Bayrock Group LLC. This operation reportedly took up the entire 51st floor.
(Read the story at the link to see a version of truth that seems stranger than any fiction could come up with. Also, Trump has been in business with comic-book gangsters.)
This is more or less what I thought would happen. Trump’s vacuous personality and constant need for approval is easily manipulated by racist sycophants such as Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Mike Pence and even Alex Jones.
How did an alleged and notorious Russian mobster connected to an illegal international gambling ring run out of Trump Tower end up as a special guest at a Donald Trump event in Moscow in 2013?
Supposedly it may have originated with radio host Mark Levin. He’s out there. And by there I mean far far to the right of whatever you’re looking at. He’s one of those hosts that you think “This is just to a make living right? These aren’t actual opinions”.
And when the first president left office, he made a concession to the American taste for simplicity by decreeing that he would henceforth no longer carry the title of president, not even as a mere courtesy.
There could only be one president of the United States at a time, he reasoned, as our newest president also observed during the transition period. But there could be more than one American general, so he let it be known that he would revert to his previous title of General Washington.
One might have thought that the world had grown somewhat more casual since the 18th century. And a lot less interested in honorifics. But apparently we have also been growing more pompous. We now have four living former presidents addressing one another as Mr. President, and a citizenry worried that it would be disrespectful to follow George Washington’s rule.
Folks, these are not newly minted PhDs who showcase their achievements by insisting on being called Doctor. When you have been president of the United States, everyone knows it. You can afford to be modest.
I have to disagree with you on that; so far, reputable news sources, ethics watchdogs, and the THINKING public have so far been able to separate the possible from the too-bizarre-to-be. (Read: I really, really, really hope you’re wrong.)
If he’s so upset about being wiretapped, why is getting him to give up the damn cellphone proving so hard?
Snide comments aside, though, during the cryptic and elaborate wordplay about precisely how expansive the powers of our spook TLAs are during the past few administrations, I don’t remember any mention of a “No using the FISA court as a tool against your political enemies” rule, much less one that was actually followed.
Obviously, right-thinking enthusiasts of National Security and the Commander in Chief as an abusive father figure for the entire nation don’t think that the apparatus is supposed to be turned on them; but does it seem especially unlikely that wiretapping Trump Tower would be at least as legal as much of the surveillance known to have been carried out?
This is not to say that its potential legality makes it a good thing(quite the contrary); but based on the asserted(and either ineffectually resisted or actively rubber-stamped by congress) scope of surveillance powers, I certainly wouldn’t want to be stuck trying to demonstrate that something illegal happened; even if, by some miracle, I had evidence sufficient to get past the spook-special “What we did was secret, so even attempting to assert standing is forbidden on National Security grounds.” argument.
