When Is a "Wiretap" Not a WIRETAP?

When it's … well, stuff. Y'know. By someone. Sometime. Somewhere.

Over a week ago, Tweetizen Trump livened up everyone's Saturday by firing off a series of early-morning tweets [1]:

► 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!

► How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

Immediately, everyone on both sides of the aisle wanted to know the basis for this. Was it a zany interpretation of a Breitbart article [2] quoting Mark Levin? Or did Trump know something, some inside intel, some discovered set of patch wires or hidden microphone or some smoking gun that would throw the otherwise scandal-free Obama years into some Nixonian perspective?

The House Intelligence Committee demanded info from the FBI on any wiretapping or surveillance order on Donald Trump or in Trump Tower. The FBI today said, "We don't remember doing that, we got nothing, but we're still looking." The US Senate insisted on the White House turning over any evidence they had of such a nefarious activity. The White House refused to respond. [4]

But everyone knew there had to be evidence, right? Because certainly nobody in their right mind — and absolutely not the President of the United States — would throw around an incendiary accusation like that if he didn't really, truly, honestly mean it and was able to back it up. Right?

Um …

'White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump wasn't referring to wiretapping when he tweeted about wiretapping. "I think there's no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election," Spicer said. "The President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities."

So … the multiple references to "wire tapping" and phones and Trump Tower were … metaphoric?

'Spicer also said that Trump was referring to the Obama administration broadly — and not accusing Obama of personal involvement — when he tweeted that "Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" and accused Obama of being a "bad" or "sick guy."'

Uh … riiiiiight. Because everyone refers to an entire administration as a "Bad (or sick) guy!"

Spicer wants us to believe that Trump's tweets were broad and completely acceptable general comments about widely known attempts by the FBI to get FISA warrants to surveil four members of the Trump team over contacts with Russia. Which, yes, was widely reported, as Spicer suggests — though Trump tweeted he "just found out," which seems very odd, but why else would he suddenly be talking about it?

(That this all came up while Trump was in the middle of furiously refuting claims about Russian entanglement and charges about his AG, Jeff Sessions, was, I am sure, just a coincidence.)

The question at this point, then, is not whether there's a smoking gun (or even smoke), but whether the Trump White House is simply going to try to let that be the answer to all this self-generated brouhaha, and if the House and Senate (let alone the public) want any more info, they can research it themselves.

We'll see how each of those bodies responds.

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[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/837989835818287106, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/837993273679560704, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/837996746236182529
[2] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/03/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts, http://lawnewz.com/uncategorized/trump-asks-if-its-legal-for-obama-admin-to-wiretap-him-here-is-the-answer/
[4] http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/intelligence-deadline-wiretaps/index.html

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