How would they be able to prove differently? For instance, would they be able to say ‘oh it was for legal concerns as an excuse to monitor, but with every intention to use the information politically?
As I previously wrote - the information gathered must be relevant to the criminal investigation. Anything else is not subject to monitoring and certainly not dissemination among various political appointees in the machine. All he has to show is that no evidence was found or existed that Trump was engaged in criminal activity with Russia. If the contents of private conversations were disseminated outside of the “criminal investigation for which the FISA court order was issued” as was revealed on Jan 19th when they said some of the information from wire taps was provided to the Obama White House that is a crime. It is a crime to use the powers of the Federal government for political purposes.
This is out of bounds legally, morally, ethically, and it is essentially the electronic version of Watergate. If they transcribed conversations (as alleged) of the Trump campaign and/or the Trump transition team and there is NOTHING in the transcript regarding Russia or nefarious links to Russia (the basis for the wiretaps) they broke the law.
Our laws prevent the party in power from using the state to target the opposition party - it is a wall that separates our nation from third world banana republics. I would never approve of such actions by any administration no matter what my level of support was for them. This is criminal.
Consider - despite all the hype and hysteria there has not been a SINGLE FACT that has come out that indicates any kind of ongoing relationship with Russia, let alone any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, to defeat Clinton. Nothing. We already know based on the limited coverage that the FISA court was used to obtain surveillance on the basis of alleged criminal contacts between the Trump organization and Russia. As suspicious as I am of that allegation, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey have all said NO EVIDENCE WAS FOUND. Therefore, what was this information used for and how was it shared (it is not supposed to be shared)?
Trump has something or he would never have said that. I have been very cautious about my enthusiasm for his tweeting, but you don’t drop a bombshell like that without a plan to reveal additional information at a future date. Trump put an accusation out for the whole world to see against the former President that he is clearly confident in and the left and media (one and the same) will probably step all over it this weekend.
If Trump was just spouting off on twitter with nothing to back it up we will all have to admit that he is not as smart as we thought he was.
I won’t bet against Trump at this point - he has been pretty masterful at guiding the conversation and he just used his limited characters via tweets to level felony charges against a whole host of people. That is pretty shocking isn’t it?
The key to understanding this is to know the law on wiretapping. You can only listen to conversations that are relevant to what you are investigating. Period. You cannot listen to or transcribe calls that are not evidence of the crime the court (FISA in this case) granted permission to gather.
If any person or entity (NSA, CIA, FBI, or NSC) listened to any call not pertaining to Russia they violated the law. If they provided details of conversations having nothing to do with links to Russia to any person outside the investigation - they violated the law.
There are only two types of captured audio on a wire tap - relevant and non-relevant. In order to be relevant it would have to show evidence of a criminal act with Russian interests. Clapper, Brennan, and Comey have already come out and said no such evidence exists! If that is the case, what happened to those recordings and who was able to listen to them and what did they do with the information? How long did the activity go on in the absence of evidence?
All Trump has to prove is that conversations among his team were captured that have no mention of Russia - that is it. Those conversations would have been obtained in violation of the FISA court order.