REPORT Coming From British Journalist/Former Conservative MP for Corby, Louise Mensch, an opponent of Mr. Trump
by Pamela Williams
IWB
President Trump would never accuse Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower on a whim without any proof. He does have a legitimate reason to believe that Obama did, in fact, wiretap Trump Tower. British Journalist, Louise Mensch, reported two counter-intelligence sources suggested a warrant had been issued to the FBI by a secret court to investigate whether there had been communications between a computer server at Trump Tower and two Russian banks.
I want to say here, I have never heard of this woman, but Mark Levin is someone I trust to be credible and legitimate. He believes her story is true. Levin is one of the leading conservative talk radio hosts in America. Levin told his seven million listeners: “The question is – was Obama surveilling top Trump campaign officials during the election? WE ABSOLUTELY KNOW THIS IS TRUE. The FBI did a preliminary criminal investigation based on a potential connection between a server in Trump Tower and a couple of Russian banks.”
Levin went on to say, “THAT TURNED OUT TO BE A DRY HOLE, but one of the most outrageous things I have ever seen…totally uncovered by the media.” So, I don’t know about you, but I believe Mark Levin. Trump is seriously at at a point of no return, and so are the American people. How can we take anymore of this? Barack Obama descended to a new low by forming resistance against President Trump. He is violating the Patriot Act and Federal Code stating someone seeking to overthrow the government can get up to 20 years in prison. Things are rapidly in decline, and President Trump has every reason to be furious.
President Trump is accusing Obama of orchestrating an illegal Watergate-style bugging operation at Trump Tower in New York, and the President has been in a firestorm of tweets. I don’t blame him! He has called Obama “sick,” and I have to agree with him. In the series of tweets President Trump said:
1. Accused Obama of having his phones tapped.
2. Claimed his predecessor stooped as low as Richard Nixon during Watergate.
3. Called Obama a “bad guy”.
4. Suggested the former president had overseen a McCarthyism-style witch hunt.
But on Saturday night Mr Obama’s closest allies hit back, saying Mr Trump’s behaviour was not presidential, labelling the president a liar and calling the allegations “simply false”.
One Democrat dismissed the explosive allegations as “just the president up early doing his routine tweeting.”
In the series of six tweets sent out over 36 minutes, Mr Trumphinted at legal action.
Mr Trump said: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!”
Mr Trump added: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp (SIC) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October just prior to Election.”
President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 after a long scandal that began with the discovery of a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington and involved the bugging of political opponents.
A spokesman for Mr Obama denied the allegations as “simply false”.
On Friday Fox News asked Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, about the suggestion that a FISA warrant had been issued by a court.
He said: “None of us in Congress have been presented with evidence to the contrary.”
Under US law, in order to approve a warrant authorising electronic surveillance of Trump Tower, a FISA court would have to have found probable cause that the target of the surveillance was an “agent of a foreign power”.
Mark Levin to Congress: Investigate Obama’s ‘Silent Coup’ vs. Trump
Radio host Mark Levin used his Thursday evening show to outline the known steps taken by President Barack Obama’s administration in its last months to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and, later, his new administration.
Levin called Obama’s effort “police state” tactics, and suggested that Obama’s actions, rather than conspiracy theories about alleged Russian interference in the presidential election to help Trump, should be the target of congressional investigation.
Drawing on sources including the New York Times and the Washington Post, Levin described the case against Obama so far, based on what is already publicly known. The following is an expanded version of that case, including events that Levin did not mention specifically but are important to the overall timeline.
1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.
2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.
3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.
4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.
5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.
6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.
7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.
8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.
9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.
10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Postreports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.