Yes, There Could Be Serious Legal Problems if Obama Admin Involved in Illegal Surveillance

President Trump recently tweeted claiming that former President Obama wiretapped him during his campaign.

The stories currently are three-fold: first, that Obama’s team tried to get a warrant from a regular, Article III federal court on Trump, and was told no by someone along the way (maybe the FBI), as the evidence was that weak or non-existent; second, Obama’s team then tried to circumvent the federal judiciary’s independent role by trying to mislabel the issue one of “foreign agents,” and tried to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “courts”, and were again turned down, when the court saw Trump named (an extremely rare act of FISA court refusal of the government, suggesting the evidence was truly non-existent against Trump); and so, third, Obama circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (and apparently under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the FISA court unwittingly granted, which Obama then misused to spy on Trump and many connected to Trump.

Under section 1809, FISA makes it a crime for anyone to either “engage in” electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA without following the law’s restrictions, or “disclose” or “use” information gathered from it in contravention of the statute’s sharp constrictions.

FISA can only be used for “foreign intelligence information.” Now that sounds broad, but is in fact very limited under the law. The only “foreign intelligence information” allowed as a basis for surveillance is information necessary to protect the United States against actual or potential “grave” “hostile” attack, war-like sabotage or international terror.

>“For all his flaws, Chris Christie might be better suited for something like this.”

>>Very likely true, but Jared Kushner won’t let him near the White House - Christie put Kushner’s dad in prison for financial crimes.

It bridge gate that kept him out of that job.

“Why?” Because, in some ways, for no better reason than they thought they could, and in their end-justifies-the-means minds, anything they could do to preserve Obama’s legacy.

I doubt the foundational thoughts were to protect Hillary, but rather, their first thought was pro-Obama. Remember, Obama was brought kicking and screaming to last minute support of Hilary. OFA/Obama and the Obama team all hate the Old Line DNC/Clinton people and all Hillary’s acolytes, and the feeling is mutual. He “stole” her presidency in 2008, and the feud is worse now than it ever was.

Obama’s people were all Sanders supporters, some very openly, others more quietly, but they were not, until it was H vs. T that they became tepidly pro-Hillary.

Over a private WH Thanksgiving holiday dinner in 2014, the Clintons tried to get Obama to stop any inquiry into her time at State, including the emails. Obama refused. It get so heated, Slick and the Hildabeast left in a huff before dessert.

The long ball look at all this is, how can the Dems sustain any Russia-related attack against Trump when Obama, in fact, and Dem, was wiretapping an opposing candidate.

Also, from a legal standpoint, no judge is going to put his name on an intercept authorization of ANY political candidate for president. I can see the judge, “I don’t care if you have an 8 x 10 glossy of then entire Trump family worshiping at Trotsky’s grave, get that POS application out of my court.”

Also, the disguised re-application with Trump’s name off it is going to reeeeeaaaaly PO some judge. They do not like that kind of BS.

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