Trump Tower wiretapping allegations
His initial claims appeared to have been based on a Breitbart News article he had been given which repeated speculations made by conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch or on a Bret Baier interview, both of which occurred the day prior to his Tweets.
[8][9] Furthermore, the 2017 CNN report cited as partial vindication for Trump was refuted by a 2019 investigation by the DOJ's Inspector General, which stated: "We are aware of no information indicating that the Crossfire Hurricane team requested or seriously considered FISA surveillance of Manafort or Flynn.
"[16] On March 3, Breitbart News, a far-right[18] website known to publish conspiracy theories,[19][20] ran an article by Joel Pollak headlined "Mark Levin to Congress: Investigate Obama's 'Silent Coup' vs.
[21][22] The Breitbart article alleged that "the Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services".
[13] Unlike the derivative accounts in National Review and Breitbart,[25][13] Mensch's original article did not use the term "wiretap" (implying voice telephone calls), but only made claims about e-mail exchanged with SVB Bank and the Russian Alfa-Bank.
[13][27] On the March 3 Special Report program, host Brett Baier cited an article from the now-defunct Circa online newspaper, mentioning the same allegations as Mensch, McClatchy, BBC, and The Guardian, and asked Ryan: "Have you heard that?"
In response to the requests from The Washington Post, Politifact and FactCheck.org, the White House provided five items:[13][17][35] None of these articles corroborated the specific allegations made in the tweets, but rather contained terms and elements of stories which were mingled together and distorted.
He cited the March 3 interview with Paul Ryan on an episode of Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News and the January 19 New York Times article as the origin of his allegations.
"[51] On April 25, 2019, when calling in to Sean Hannity's Fox news show, Trump said that his original allegation of "wires tapped" was not literal as he had used quotation marks, saying that he really meant: "surveillance, spying you can sort of say whatever you want".
In the summer of 2016,[53] long before the first public statement from the Obama Administration on October 7, 2016, about Russian interference,[54] "Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.'s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader in Britain, said "Trump is compromising the vital UK-US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment.
[66][63] On January 11, 2017, The Guardian reported[67] that the FBI initially applied for a FISA warrant in June 2016, requesting to "monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials".
A source told The Guardian that the FBI then submitted a more narrowly focused request in October, "but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation".
According to Wood, this application was rejected, as was a more narrowly focused request in July, and the order was finally granted by a different FISA judge on October 15, three weeks before the presidential election.
[68] On January 18, McClatchy separately[13] reported[69] that "the FBI had obtained a warrant on Oct. 15 from the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing investigators access to bank records and other documents about potential payments and money transfers related to Russia".
In the report, the IG contradicts what CNN was told in 2017, noting that the FBI team overseeing the investigation did not seek FISA surveillance of Paul Manafort.
investigated four unidentified Trump campaign aides in those early months...[including]...Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mr.
"[72] In its March 5 analysis of the reporting that preceded Trump's allegations, The Washington Post stated that "the articles all suggest that the FISA requests—if they happened—were done by the intelligence agencies and the FBI", and not by the Obama administration.
This absence of verification, combined with Mensch's reliance on "vague"[25] and anonymous sourcing to individuals "with links to the counter-intelligence community", lead The Times and The Post to urge skepticism about the veracity of her account.
While acknowledging that "it does make for a more complicated picture than previously known", Graham argued "there are reasons to doubt" that Trump was even aware of the Manafort wiretap at the time he made his unsupported allegations against Obama.
"[33] The Wall Street Journal described Obama as "livid" when he heard about the allegations personally,[77] though other sources said he "rolled his eyes" and remained more concerned about Trump's conservative and nationalist agenda.
[79] Elizabeth Goitein, a surveillance law expert at New York University, pointed out that backdoor searches of incidental records collected on Americans overseas were allowed by U.S.
[93] As an initial response, the FBI briefed the Gang of Eight on March 9, giving them insight into Crossfire Hurricane, including the existence of a FISA warrant on Carter Page but requested more time to produce actual documentation for the intelligence committees to review.
[39] On March 16, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a joint statement echoing that sentiment, saying "based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element to the United States government either before or after Election Day.
[97] In September, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice stated that a December 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump transition officials and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) raised suspicions because the UAE allegedly failed to give the Obama administration advance notice of Zayed's visit to the U.S., as is customary.
[100] Liberal watchdog group American Oversight filed a FOIA request on March 20, 2017, demanding records that supported or disproved Trump's wiretap tweets.
"[3] A December 9, 2019, report by the DOJ's Inspector General stated that "we are aware of no information indicating that the Crossfire Hurricane team requested or seriously considered FISA surveillance of Manafort or Flynn.
[102] Late night talk show hosts Trevor Noah, James Corden and Stephen Colbert all made fun of President Trump for his wiretap accusations.
[44] Celebrities Alec Baldwin, Don Cheadle, Sarah Silverman, Sophia Bush and J.K. Rowling publicly reacted to Trump's claims,[104] while actor Mark Hamill read the tweets as Joker, the fictional supervillain,[105] and author Stephen King jokingly turned them into a short story.
[108] According to an April 2019 Politico/Morning Consult poll, 38% of American voters believed Donald Trump's presidential campaign was spied on during the 2016 election, with 57% agreement by Republicans and 24% by Democrats.
