Trump Tower Wiretapped?

[Unusual Tournament]

Just now, DieChecker said:

I WAS amazed that the "Repeal Obamacare" vote passed yesterday. I thought it would fold again like last time. It could be that Trump is getting all the Republicans to line up now. ?? Maybe?

It passed alright. Just! That **** chewing he gave Paul Ryan must have done the trick. Now Trump has a bigger problem... what is he going to replace it with and will it work. 

[+DieChecker]

1 minute ago, Captain Risky said:

It passed alright. Just! That **** chewing he gave Paul Ryan must have done the trick. Now Trump has a bigger problem... what is he going to replace it with and will it work. 

That is a big question. He promises lower rates and lower deductibles. AND he (shudder) praised the Australian healthcare... (Horrors I say).

I really don't know where he is going with healthcare, but I feel that the Obamacare was about to collapse due to the expense on those who were using it. 

[Unusual Tournament]

2 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

That is a big question. He promises lower rates and lower deductibles. AND he (shudder) praised the Australian healthcare... (Horrors I say).

I really don't know where he is going with healthcare, but I feel that the Obamacare was about to collapse due to the expense on those who were using it. 

You know our politicians (well the Liberals which equal your republicans) want to tear down our health system and privatise the lot resembling yours and NOW you guy's wanna copy us. Mate i think if there were any easy solutions then they would have done them already. Good luck. I think everyone should have free and affordable health care and i hope your politicians do right and keep it out of private hands.  

[Yamato]

After more than two months of time and over 79 pages of discussion, was Trump Tower wiretapped by the Obama administration?

Nope.

What this fantastic tall tale has accomplished though is a mass distraction into a hundred other things.  

Like health.  If Sanjay Gupta is correct and other articles from 2012-2014 available online are correct that he's probably drawing on as sources, 1% of our population uses over 20% of our healthcare,  5% of our population uses 50% of our healthcare, and 20% of our population uses 80% of our healthcare.   If this lopsided result was pulled from a single year of data, that's not much to go by but if this breakdown remains true across multiple years of data, it's worth looking into.  Do these 5% who consume such massive amounts of health care receive lifesaving services, or are they chasing after their side effects hopping from one drug to the other?    If it's the former, it can't be surgery year after year, that would only be true in a tiny number of cases.    If it's the latter, there's a massive opportunity to reduce costs there.

[+DieChecker]

New wiretapping news:

One reason Comey was fired.... Thought Trump wiretapping claim was "Crazy".

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/comey-reportedly-called-trump-‘crazy’-after-obama-wiretapping-claim

Quote

On March 9, Trump abruptly fired Comey, citing that he no longer had confidence that the FBI director could effectively lead the bureau. While the White House officially stated that the decision was made following a recommendation from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Trump asserted that he was going to fire Comey regardless of counsel.

"[Comey]'s a showboat, he's a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil," Trump told NBC News on May 11.

 

On May 10, sources within the FBI told The New York Times that Comey had a mutually negative opinion of the president following Trump's accusation that Obama wiretapped him.

Senator Rand Paul now sides with Trump. And believes Trump was wiretapped.

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/sen-paul-trump-was-wiretapped-course-he-was

Quote

(CNSNews.com) -- Commenting on the investigations of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and reported U.S. intelligence surveillance of that activity, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said "some in the media" were wrong in their reporting because Donald Trump certainly was wiretapped, "surveilled."

Senator Paul is a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the Committee on Foreign Relations. 

Quote

Sen. Paul responded,  “And I think some in the media have gotten this wrong. President Trump said he was wiretapped. Of course, he was."

"We don’t really do old-fashioned wiretapping," said Paul. "There’s no wire attached to most of our phones. Wiretapping means that you were surveilled."

"Someone listened by using some sort of modern technology that literally is not really a wiretap anymore," he said.  "But they did listen to [Lt. Gen. Michael] Flynn’s phone calls."

"This is an amazing invasion of privacy," said the senator. "Realize what kind of world we’re going to live in. Realize the statement that Chuck Schumer said just a week or two ago. He said, don’t mess with our intelligence community because they’ll get you six ways to Sunday, if you do, and Trump’s making a big mistake here."

A good summery of the whole thing, and a conclusion at the end.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/05/04/trumps-tweets-dont-excuse-media-ignoring-obama-surveillance-story/

Quote

That reflexive refusal to fairly cover — or just cover, period — stories that might help the president is not how readers or viewers are served. Journalists should go where the stories lead, even if they threaten to harm their best Obama intelligence sources and leakers from the last few months or help a president they worked very hard to defeat. If they need to mention their frustration with his tweets 18 times before they cover FISA warrants, unmasking, or other intelligence actions, that’s fine. But they can’t let that frustration keep them from covering a big story in the public interest.

 

[Lilly]

I think it's now become pretty obvious that team Trump was electronically surveilled. The mainstream media is simply refusing to cover anything that supports Trump's claim because the vast majority of the mainstream media strongly leans left/progressive. Once again, this is all about people who feel they are entitled to use any means necessary to resist a duly elected President. These are the people who appear to be the ones violating the law IMO.

Now, it could be some on Trump's election team were not all that above board either (it's certainly possible). But, if there were gross violations of law why didn't the proof hit the fan before the election? Or before Trump was sworn in? Why hasn't all of Trump's supposed 'criminal actions' come forward to stop him? The hypothesis that all this is just part of a smear campaign is looking more and more likely.

Just to add, so far there's still no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to throw the election: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/james-clapper-still-no-evidence-of-any-russian-collusion-with-trump-campaign/article/2622452

And here: https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/05/04/sen-feinstein-no-evidence-of-russian-collusion-with-trump-campaign-at-this-time/

When is enough finally enough? Without any direct evidence how and why should an investigation keep on going?

[Lilly]

All of this reminds me of something that happened way back when I was a child. The local Pharmacist (it was a small town) had 5 children and from all appearances they were a very nice family. Someone came forth saying that the parents were unfit and an investigation was launched. Well, it turns out that all this was based on totally false allegations. Someone had a personal grudge against the Pharmacist (due to wanting him to give them more controlled medication than was legally allowed). It was flat out obvious that the claim of child abuse/neglect was based on anger and retribution. So, the Pharmacist and his wife had never done anything wrong towards their children so all was just fine, right? Nope, the mere allegations harmed this man's reputation. Eventually he sold the drugstore and moved his business to another town across the state.

 

[+DieChecker]

54 minutes ago, Lilly said:

When is enough finally enough? 

When the "real" Birth Certificate is found. Errrr.... I mean the "real" connections to the Russians are found.

[Lilly]

3 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

When the "real" Birth Certificate is found. Errrr.... I mean the "real" connections to the Russians are found.

Yeah, the birth certificate stuff was stupid too...but I don't think the FBI was officially investigating that nonsense though? Also, the mainstream media wasn't telling everyone the 'birther BS' was real either.

[Merc14]

Rumor mill is reporting that with Comey gone, Susan Rice’s lawyers may be asking for immunity in the illegal surveillances of Trump campaign staff and various reporters.  No worthwhile link as this was generated by Infowars but something to keep an eye out for.

 

[Uncle Sam]

On 5/12/2017 at 6:23 AM, Lilly said:

All of this reminds me of something that happened way back when I was a child. The local Pharmacist (it was a small town) had 5 children and from all appearances they were a very nice family. Someone came forth saying that the parents were unfit and an investigation was launched. Well, it turns out that all this was based on totally false allegations. Someone had a personal grudge against the Pharmacist (due to wanting him to give them more controlled medication than was legally allowed). It was flat out obvious that the claim of child abuse/neglect was based on anger and retribution. So, the Pharmacist and his wife had never done anything wrong towards their children so all was just fine, right? Nope, the mere allegations harmed this man's reputation. Eventually he sold the drugstore and moved his business to another town across the state.

 

That is the problem with Allegations, they treat it like guilty until proven innocent then they never correct it. They just drop it and leaving people believing this person still did the crime.

[Yamato]

On 2017-5-12 at 11:55 AM, Lilly said:

I think it's now become pretty obvious that team Trump was electronically surveilled. The mainstream media is simply refusing to cover anything that supports Trump's claim because the vast majority of the mainstream media strongly leans left/progressive. Once again, this is all about people who feel they are entitled to use any means necessary to resist a duly elected President. These are the people who appear to be the ones violating the law IMO.

Now, it could be some on Trump's election team were not all that above board either (it's certainly possible). But, if there were gross violations of law why didn't the proof hit the fan before the election? Or before Trump was sworn in? Why hasn't all of Trump's supposed 'criminal actions' come forward to stop him? The hypothesis that all this is just part of a smear campaign is looking more and more likely.

Just to add, so far there's still no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to throw the election: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/james-clapper-still-no-evidence-of-any-russian-collusion-with-trump-campaign/article/2622452

And here: https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/05/04/sen-feinstein-no-evidence-of-russian-collusion-with-trump-campaign-at-this-time/

When is enough finally enough? Without any direct evidence how and why should an investigation keep on going?

What's so pathetic is that the President merely announces that he's being surveilled with zero evidence to show for it and the mainstream media can't shut up about it. 

We're all being electronically surveilled.  The President better be too or else it's another double standard and another meaningless outrage to rabble rouse about.

*snip*

Edited May 22, 2017 by Saru
Removed personal attack - tone it down please.

[Yamato]

19 hours ago, Uncle Sam said:

That is the problem with Allegations, they treat it like guilty until proven innocent then they never correct it.

Allegations are fine.   That's how it works.   Punishments are not.   Innocent until proven guilty.

Quote

They just drop it and leaving people believing this person still did the crime.

Same old witch hunt as the Hillary mail.    Oh now you folks don't like it.   Oh ok.

[Why not]

1 hour ago, Yamato said:

Allegations are fine.   That's how it works.   Punishments are not.   Innocent until proven guilty.

Same old witch hunt as the Hillary mail.    Oh now you folks don't like it.   Oh ok.

I never quote your post because I know where they go, but you just don't get it. I believe even the Comey went on a 20 minute rant on her crimes before he before he stunned the world and let her off the hook. The intelligence agencies have said there is No evidence of collusion so far on Trump, so yes there is a big difference.

[Yamato]

1 hour ago, Why not said:

I never quote your post

Then do what you say!  

There isn't a spittle fleck on a stick of evidence that "Obama wiretapped, tapped, or "tapped" Trump Tower" either which should put this insubstantial thread to sleep for good but like the Hillary mail, it's another non-story the kool aid media can't stop serving.

[+DieChecker]

I read this today and thought it was interesting....

http://circa.com/politics/barack-obamas-team-secretly-disclosed-years-of-illegal-nsa-searches-spying-on-americans

Quote

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

Quote

More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.

Quote

Speaking Wednesday on Fox News, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said there was an apparent effort under the Obama Administration to increase the number of unmaskings of Americans.

"If we determine this to be true, this is an enormous abuse of power," Paul said. “This will dwarf all other stories.”

“There are hundreds and hundreds of people,” Paul added.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself and safeguard American’s privacy as guaranteed by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.

Considering the amount of data that NSA supposedly sifts through, this could mean that they could have something on just about everyone... They are keeping names on US citizens and creating file histories on just about anyone they want to.

[Merc14]

2 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

I read this today and thought it was interesting....

http://circa.com/politics/barack-obamas-team-secretly-disclosed-years-of-illegal-nsa-searches-spying-on-americans

Considering the amount of data that NSA supposedly sifts through, this could mean that they could have something on just about everyone... They are keeping names on US citizens and creating file histories on just about anyone they want to.

This is the real crime being uncovered from this collusion CT.

[+DieChecker]

10 minutes ago, Merc14 said:

This is the real crime being uncovered from this collusion CT.

And President "Most Public Openness Ever" Obama had it kept a secret. Doubtless no one was ever to know this happened and it was to be cleaned up before anyone knew.

[Merc14]

2 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

And President "Most Public Openness Ever" Obama had it kept a secret. Doubtless no one was ever to know this happened and it was to be cleaned up before anyone knew.

It would still be a secret if the democrats hadn't started digging so publicly into the Trump collusion myth. 

[Yamato]

16 hours ago, Merc14 said:

This is the real crime being uncovered from this collusion CT.

I agree it's grown appendages of mythology.

But for the "no evidence" patrol, I see evident things that shouldn't exist if there was nothing to hide.   Session's lies, Flynn's resignation, Comey's firing.

Republicans are now hard at work destroying the political capital they just won from the bumbling and ever-disappointing Democrats.

So far they've gotten nothing accomplished, and are once again proving they're the same big-government spenders they really are.  All one has to do is look at the spending.  

Which brings us to one of the only real differences between Republicans and Democrats that actually exists: Rhetoric.   At least the Democrats don't fake-it in election seasons that they're fiscal conservatives.  Republicans lie to the moon every campaign season and they get in office and promptly betray their voters with their spending addictions.   Hillary Clinton can be 10x worse than you say she is, and I'm not going to like being betrayed like that any more.

I'm sure there's plenty of good Democrats and Republicans on more local or state government levels but the federal ones are puppets Merc.  They're sold shills to the Real Owners.  That's what they had to do, to get in power in the first place.   They're probably more ambitious creatures of necessity than the evil-doers I believe they are.  They're also all good to get out and stay out.  Republicans and Democrats are like two barrels of rotting fish.   What I have to wonder is how can anyone who actually loves his country can think that incessantly defending one of these barrels of rotting fish is good enough for his/her country?

[RoofGardener]

DieChecker's linked article IS very interesting, and worrying. 

It's worth noting, however (if I'm reading it correctly), that Obama wasn't actually criticised for ORDERING these activities. That would be down to the Directors of the respective security agencies. The court merely noted that it happened under Obama's watch. 

[Lilly]

Keep in mind though, the Directors of these various agencies serve at the pleasure of the Commander and Chief.

[+DieChecker]

As said by renowned Jewish Liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

Quote

Legal expert Alan Dershowitz reminded viewers that President Trump could have just pardoned former national security advisor Michael Flynn and stopped the FBI's investigation into Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador.

"The president has the authority to direct the head of the FBI to stop investigating anyone," Dershowitz stated on "Your World." "I've been saying this for months."

"I think this puts an end to any claim that President Trump obstructed justice. You can't obstruct justice by simply exercising your power under the Constitution," he added.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/08/alan-dershowitz-president-trump-could-have-just-pardoned-michael-flynn

Indeed. Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2 all did comparable actions to what Trump did, and no one cared at the time. Reagan made Iran-Contra basically disappear, and he was still super popular afterward. Obama hid behind Executive Privilege during the Fast And Furious scandal, and several other scandals. Trump though is being treated differently..... Some would say... Unfairly, by the Press.

Quote

Comey confirmed that under our Constitution, the president has the authority to direct the FBI to stop investigating any individual. I paraphrase, because the transcript is not yet available:  the president can, in theory, decide who to investigate, who to stop investigating, who to prosecute and who not to prosecute.  The president is the head of the unified executive branch of government, and the Justice Department and the FBI work under him and he may order them to do what he wishes.                     

As a matter of law, Comey is 100 percent correct.  As I have long argued, and as Comey confirmed in his written statement, our history shows that many presidents—from Adams to Jefferson, to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Bush 1, and to Obama – have directed the Justice Department with regard to ongoing investigations. The history is clear, the precedents are clear, the constitutional structure is clear, and common sense is clear. 

Yet virtually every Democratic pundit, in their haste to “get” President Trump, has willfully ignored these realities.  In doing so they have endangered our civil liberties and constitutional rights.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/08/dershowitz-comey-confirms-that-im-right-and-all-democratic-commentators-are-wrong.html

[Yamato]

Quote

In doing so they have endangered our civil liberties and constitutional rights.

How does wiretapping Presidential candidates (that is, "ignoring realities" related to allegedly wiretapping Presidential candidates) endanger my civil liberties and Constitutional rights anymore than any time the FBI (or other govt agency) has ever wiretapped anyone?

Surveil the little people but not the President?   No.  Surveil the President and not the little people. 

The President is a public figure, arguably the most public figure in the country if not the entire world.   We should all be keeping him (or her) under tight surveillance at all times.   Why?  Because power corrupts.   None of you want unbridled corruption in this country anymore than I do.

If the govt is collecting the peoples' emails then the people should be reading the govt's emails, ditto phone calls, text messages, private meetings behind closed doors, dialogue with foreign leaders et al.   There should be no double standard, Mr Dershowitz.  But there is, and you're okay with that.

Dershowitz should stick with what he's good at, defending evil murderers and filthy child molesters.   Nothing's shocking about him getting a job at Fox News Channel of course; but it's a bit surprising when he's treated like a voice of reason much less a barometer of right and wrong.

Quote

You can't obstruct justice by simply exercising your power under the Constitution

No.  Having and exercising power doesn't mean it's justice.   To believe so smacks of total submission to the power of the State.

A very simple example that proves Dershowitz wrong?   People had power to have slaves under the Constitution.  

One can obstruct justice by exercising power under any authority.  He added "simply" which makes his remarks sound more reasonable but even with "simply", he's still wrong.

[yesnomaybe]

bump:

Quote

Justice Department: No evidence Obama wiretapped Trump Tower

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/02/obama-trump-tower-wiretap-no-evidence-242284