A Republican Senate Judiciary Member Just Gave Trump Terrible Wiretap News
President Trump’s latest Twitter rant, in which he alleged with no evidence that President Obama had wiretapped his campaign office in Trump Tower, may very well be the slip up that exposes his campaign’s treasonous collusion with the dictatorial Russian Federation to undermine American democracy.
The implication that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) warrant was issued for Trump Tower means that the intelligence court had actionable intelligence suggesting that a foreign agent was in communication with the very heart of Trump’s campaign.
This possibility is so scandalous that even many prominent Republicans have begun to call for an intensive investigation into Trump’s Russia ties. Earlier today Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) perfectly explained the massive scandal that is unfolding before our eyes as the ties between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin, and now Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), a prominent member of the Senate Judiciary and Armed Services Committee, has issued a powerful call for transparency from our President in this time of great uncertainty.
Here is his statement in full:
“The President today made some very serious allegations, and the informed citizens that a republic requires deserve more information. If there were wiretaps of then-candidate Trump’s organization or campaign, then it was either with FISA Court authorization or without such authorization. If without, the President should explain what sort of wiretap it was and how he knows this. It is possible that he was illegally tapped.
On the other hand, if it was with a legal FISA Court order, then an application for surveillance exists that the Court found credible. The President should ask that this full application regarding surveillance of foreign operatives or operations be made available, ideally to the full public, and at a bare minimum to the U.S. Senate.
“We are in the midst of a civilization-warping crisis of public trust, and the President’s allegations today demand the thorough and dispassionate attention of serious patriots. A quest for the full truth, rather than knee-jerk partisanship, must be our guide if we are going to rebuild civic trust and health”
As Sen. Sasse notes, there are essentially two possibilities at this point. One is that the Obama administration ordered an illegal and baseless wiretap on a rival campaign office, and the other is that a FISA court, believing there to be substantial evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, issued a warrant to investigate at Trump Tower.
The second is, of course, infinitely more likely, not only because the Obama administration has no history of such scandalous Orwellian behavior but because of the now overwhelming evidence of compromising ties between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives. Indeed claims had already been circulating in the intelligence community that just such a FISA warrant had been issued.
Trump’s allegation of a wiretap at Trump Tower – where Trump’s campaign office was located so that he could funnel campaign money into his own pockets – seems to corroborate earlier these allegations that a FISA warrant had been issued to investigate foreign agents in Trump’s very campaign office. Those claims were made by two separate sources with ties to the counterintelligence community and were first reported in The Guardian.
According to those intelligence agents, the wiretap was meant to investigate communications between a server at Trump campaign headquarters and Alfa Bank, a Russian bank with ties to the country’s ruling oligarchs of the sort that the FSB has been known to use to funnel money to their favored Western political parties.
We now know that the highest levels of the Russian government were in communication with Trump campaign agents at a time when Russia was actively working to undermine our democracy and install Donald Trump as President.
We know that numerous intelligence chiefs believe the FSB to have personally incriminating information about the President which they are using to blackmail him and that many of these once-unverified claims have since been proven to be true.
We know that Trump has surrounded himself with figures tied directly to Russia’s economic and political elite. We know that he has stubbornly and inexplicably refused to release his taxes, possibly to cover up payments tying him to Russia.
Anyone who respects the sovereignty of this country and the dignity of the office of President should strongly support Sen. Sasse’s call for Mr. Trump to, in the service of full transparency, order the release of the FISA authorization. It is only a matter of time before Trump’s web of lies begins to collapse and the full extent of his treason is exposed.
