Trump Discovers Obama's Secret Plan to Take Out His Family Snopes

Since the early weeks of U.S. President Donald Trump'southward presidency, he has alleged a grand scheme by Democratic political opponents to undermine his political agenda by illegally "spying" on his inner circle of confidants.

For example, on March 4, 2017, about six weeks after his inauguration, the president claimed in a series of tweets that Barack Obama, his predecessor, nefariously "wire tapped" Trump Tower in New York — the headquarters for the Trump Organization — during the 2016 presidential race.

The tweet implied that Obama abused his presidential powers to direct U.S. intelligence officials to illegally monitor the Trump campaign during its race against then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Since then, Trump has circulated some version of the theory — that the Obama assistants or unidentified political opponents "spied on our campaign illegally" — dozens of times, according to an archive of Trump'south social media activity, media interviews, rallies, and press conferences called Fact.ba.se.

"They spied on my campaign, and they got defenseless," the president said while accepting the Republican Party'southward nomination for president in the 2020 race against Democratic rival Joe Biden. (Run into a transcript of the whole speech here.)

By September 2020, about six weeks before the 2020 election, the president lumped his opponent in with the alleged conspiracy to undermine his previous campaign. Trump told fans at an Ohio rally on Sept. 21:

"We caught them — and by the way, that'southward Biden, that's Obama. […] all of the sleaze numberless," the president said.

Below, we unpack the basis for the claim — which refers to a years-long investigation into potential bunco between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election — also as bipartisan congressional reports and federal records that plant no evidence that Obama, or his Democratic allies, illegally launched surveillance efforts.

Surreptitious Agents Scrutinized Trump's Inner Circle in 2016

In belatedly July 2016, under the Obama administration, the U.Southward. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched a secret probe into the Trump campaign'southward relationships with Russian agents.

To better understand how the investigation came to be — and whether Obama abused his presidential powers to direct underground agents to illegally monitor Trump's campaign — we referred to a report by U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz, released in December 2019. Per that federal document, the FBI launched the covert surveillance effort, code-named "Crossfire Hurricane," three days afterward learning that a Trump aid "had received some kind of proffer from Russia" that it could help the Trump campaign uncover information that would impairment Clinton and Obama.

Roughly one calendar month into the undercover investigation, James Comey, then-FBI director, said he told Obama and others nigh the FBI'southward surveillance try, which primarily scrutinized 4 Trump campaign aides — Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Mike Flynn, and Paul Manafort — because of their apparent or suspected ties to the Kremlin. Only Comey said he did not describe the operation in detail with the sitting president. The inspector general'south report stated:

Comey said he idea it was of import that the President know the nature of the FBI's efforts without providing any specifics. Comey said although he did not think exactly what he said, he may have said there were four individuals with "some clan or connection to the Trump campaign." Comey stated that after he provided this information, no 1 at the meeting responded or followed upwardly with whatsoever questions.

In other words, the FBI — not Obama — launched the surveillance effort, and only a scattering of counterintelligence agents knew the full scope of the mission, only no show showed they gave directions on how it was done. The investigators were acting on orders from FBI leaders — not the president.

And so, in May 2017, and then-U.Southward. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller — a prosecutor who headed the FBI for more than a decade — to accept over the FBI's work with a criminal investigation to determine whether Trump had obstructed justice with his allies' alleged ties to Russia. Although Mueller'southward team did not discover a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, saying information technology had not obtained sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges, it uncovered multiple contacts betwixt the entrada and Russia showing that the latter perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and "worked to secure that outcome."

Adjacent, nosotros looked for show to ostend or disprove that the investigation broke the constabulary to secretly monitor whatever fellow member of the Trump campaign.

Nosotros learned the FBI used undercover informants to investigate Trump's inner circle, a routine technique for such investigations into alleged espionage or terrorism. And according to Horowitz' study, the FBI employed "electronic surveillance" of only one person — Page, who was an adviser to Trump.

"The decision to seek to use this highly intrusive investigative technique was known and approved at multiple levels of the section," the study stated.

However, at the time, the FBI relied on a dossier of unreliable enquiry compiled by the one-time British spy Christopher Steele in its applications for warrants to monitor Page. And it was unclear whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Deed, which created the special surveillance court for national security cases, would have granted the bureau permission to overhear on Page's conversations had the FBI omitted details from that dossier on its applications. "[It] was clearly the responsibility of Crossfire Hurricane squad members to propose [the courtroom] of such critical information," Horowitz' report said.

Even so, that misstep gave Trump and his supporters a reason to discredit the entire investigation into the campaign's contact with Russian operatives. Every bit of this report, one member of the investigating team — a old FBI lawyer —pleaded guilty in August 2020 to altering an email the bureau relied on to file the applications to monitor Page, though no other investigator faced charges for breaking law. A review of the FBI'south piece of work past John Durham, a federal prosecutor, remained ongoing.

We as well analyzed a redacted version of a roughly 1,000-page document compiled by the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee released in Baronial 2020. The committee launched its own bipartisan examination into Russia'southward interference in the 2016 election to gauge what, exactly, the whole ordeal meant for hereafter American elections. (The redacted portions of the document were related to Russia's interference in the 2020 ballot and classified information as of this writing.)

The committee called the report "the most comprehensive description to date of Russia's activities and the threat they posed," and it included interviews with members of the Obama administration. In particular, it indirectly tied the former president to the FBI's decision to rely on the dossier in its applications for courtroom warrants to secretly monitor Folio, with this language:

In early December, President Obama tasked the [Intelligence Customs] with a comprehensive assessment of Russia'south involvement in the 2016 election. FBI — specially Deputy Director Andy McCabe — requested that the dossier data be included in the assessment, pointing to the President's asking for comprehensiveness. CIA analysts pushed back on FBI's request, seeing the memos every bit uncorroborated and questioning the sourcing. All three primary author agencies eventually compromised on summarizing the allegations in an annex to the assessment. In early Jan, a main-level team from [the Office of the Director of National Intelligence], CIA, FBI, and [National Security Bureau] briefed a highly compartmented version of the total assessment to the President, the President-elect, and the Gang of Eight. Then-FBI Director Comey briefed Trump one-on-one on the contents of the annex.

In other words, Obama asked for an update on counterintelligence agents' probe roughly five months after the FBI started its surreptitious investigation, and McCabe reportedly requested that the dossier'southward data be included in the applications to monitor Page considering of the president's wish for comprehensiveness.

Although, equally in Horowitz' report, no testify showed Obama or other members of his administration knew the full extent of the investigation, or how it was conducted. Intelligence leaders gave both Trump and Obama a "highly compartmented version of the full assessment" in early January, according to congressional committee's review. That document also stated the bureau'south initial interest in Folio was justified.

Trump Made the Wiretap Claim 'on a Hunch'

Shortly after Trump became aware of the FBI'due south investigation in spring 2017, per the Senate committee's report, he offset claimed without evidence or documentation that political opponents committed a federal crime by ordering the FBI to secretly eavesdrop on the Trump campaign. The posts surprised members of the Trump team, with i assistance to the president saying it was unclear to what "wiretapping" incident he was referring, according to Reuters. The news outlet reported at the fourth dimension:

Nether U.Due south. police, a federal court would accept to have found probable crusade that the target of the surveillance is an 'amanuensis of a foreign ability' in club to approve a warrant authorizing electronic surveillance of Trump Tower.

Several conservative news outlets and commentators have made allegations in recent days about Trump existence wiretapped during the entrada, without offer any evidence.

Hours after Trump'south tweets, Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis rebutted the allegations, and attempted to debunk Trump's theory. His argument read:

"A key rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led past the Department of Justice. Every bit part of that exercise, neither President Obama nor any White House official always ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Whatever proposition otherwise is just false."

Lewis was not the sole dissenting vocalism from Obama's team. A old senior U.S. official with direct noesis of the DOJ investigation told CNN that Trump'due south phones were never tapped. "This did non happen. It is fake. Wrong," said the former official, whom the news outlet did not identify. Additionally, Ben Rhodes, Obama'south former deputy national security advisor, tweeted that "No President tin order a wiretap."

Weeks after the president's tweet thread, Comey said the bureau had no records to support the merits of wiretapping past the Obama administration, and the DOJ after confirmed that consensus in a courtroom filing (an excerpt of which is below).

Nearly two years later, Trump provided insight into his rationale for authoring the posts, which alleged criminal wrongdoing against Obama. Trump said in an Apr 19, 2019, interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity that he authored the tweets well-nigh the former president ordering agents to "wiretap" the Trump Tower on "a little bit of a hunch," according to a transcript by Factba.se.

Trump said:

Now, [Clinton] lost, and at present they are trying to infiltrate the administration to — really, it's a coup. It'south spying. […] Two years ago when I said that only on a little bit of a hunch and a little bit of wisdom. […] If they weren't doing anything wrong, it would have just gone past, nobody would accept cared almost it. It was pretty insignificant, I thought, when I said it — and that's pretty astonishing.

In summary, while the FBI under the Obama administration launched an investigation into contacts betwixt Trump'due south associates and Russian operatives earlier the 2016 election — an examination that included a hole-and-corner mission to monitor Page, one of Trump'southward allies at the time — no courtroom filings, interview transcripts or other federal records showed the old president directed agents to secretly monitor the Trump campaign. For those reasons, we rate this merits "mostly false."

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Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-spying-trump-campaign/

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