Anybody have links on how Obama could be implicated in approving the surveillance on the Trump campaign ? Need to shut up a facebooker.
Trump made that claim back on March 2017, I believe. As to “proof”, I think we don’t have that documented. But it seems obviously true. I think something more definite will be available shortly.
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1) Do they think Obama was so ignorant of his WH staff that he wouldn't know they were turning the FBI and other federal agencies against his political rival?
2) Do they think his staff is so disrespectful that they would jeopardize his entire reputation & legacy with such outrageous and possibly illegal abuses of the FISA process without getting his permission?
3) Tell your FB crowd to stay tuned. It's going to be proven that the spying on Americans PRECEDED the BOGUS FISA applications! This could only have been accomplished on direct orders of the President.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/obama-camp-disingenuous-denials-fisa-surveillance-trump/
March 5, 2017
Trump’s tweets on Saturday prompted some interesting “denials” from the Obama camp. These can be summarized in the statement put out by Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis:
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. 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.
This seems disingenuous on several levels.
First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that “orders” surveillance. And by statute, it is the Justice Department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court. So, the issue is not whether Obama or some member of his White House staff “ordered” surveillance of Trump and his associates. The issues are (a) whether the Obama Justice Department sought such surveillance authorization from the FISA court, and (b) whether, if the Justice Department did that, the White House was aware of or complicit in the decision to do so. Personally, given the explosive and controversial nature of the surveillance request we are talking about – an application to wiretap the presidential candidate of the opposition party, and some of his associates, during the heat of the presidential campaign, based on the allegation that the candidate and his associates were acting as Russian agents – it seems to me that there is less than zero chance that could have happened without consultation between the Justice Department and the White House.
Second, the business about never ordering surveillance against American citizens is nonsense. Obama had American citizens killed in drone operations. Obviously, that was not done in the U.S. or through the FISA process; it was done overseas, under the president’s commander-in-chief and statutory authority during wartime. But the notion that Obama would never have an American subject to surveillance is absurd.
Third, that brings us to a related point: FISA national-security investigations are not like criminal investigations. They are more like covert intelligence operations – which presidents personally sign off on. The intention is not to build a criminal case; it is to gather information about what foreign powers are up, particularly on U.S. soil. One of the points in FISA proceedings’ being classified is that they remain secret – the idea is not to prejudice an American citizen with publication of the fact that he has been subjected to surveillance even though he is not alleged to have engaged in criminal wrongdoing.
FBI texts: Obama ‘wants to know everything we’re doing’
In a Sept. 2, 2016, text exchange, Page writes that she was preparing the talking points because “potus wants to know everything we’re doing.” Potus is an acronym for president of the United States.
But it is not clear that the text message between the two refers to the FBI’s investigation of Clinton. Johnson’s report only says that the text “may relate” to the FBI’s Clinton investigation, since the Justice Department had redacted other text messages that related to other investigations. An earlier text in that sequence refers to the need to develop talking points for Comey in connection with a morning meeting “on the 7th.”
The text in question was sent just as Obama was preparing to attend an international summit in China, where he would meet face-to-face with Vladimir Putin on Sept. 5