Trump Accusation Of Obama Wiretaps To Preemptively Deflect Transcripts Showing Collusion

Well, it certainly looks like Trump’s tweetstorm this morning is more than a one-off. The GOP is off and running with the line that the Obama administration’s obtaining a wiretap on Trump campaign officials is the real interference in the election. In addition, some GOP talking heads are saying it is unclear whether these wiretaps were authorized or not. I find it beyond belief that Obama would use an unauthorized wiretap and even Fox News is at least reporting the administration asked for a FISA warrant in June and were turned down and then asked again in October.  And now Reuters is reporting that Obama is pushing back, as his spokesman says neither Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. So these wiretaps were clearly done with the proper authority. It is also important to know that Trump claimed that Trump Tower was wiretapped, not Trump himself. Paul Manafort has an office in Trump Tower and is clearly a target in the ongoing investigations. So it is probable that Manafort was the target rather than Trump himself or his operations in Trump Tower.

Yesterday, Chris Coons, Democratic Senator from Delaware was on with Andrea Mitchell and, right at the end of her interview, he specifically made the claim that there are transcripts showing whether or not Trump campaign officials colluded with the Russians during the campaign. Mitchell repeated that claim back to Coons and he confirmed what he said. MSNBC is reporting this again this morning and Coons has apparently not walked it back. Coons sits on the Judiciary Committee but not on the Intelligence Committee. So there is clearly some information floating around that there are transcripts and they possible show some collusion. But, so far, there is nothing to back up that claim.

Putting this all together, it seems likely that there are some incriminating transcripts resulting from the October wiretaps that could be hugely damaging to Trump. And the Trump team now knows that. The spin today on the wiretaps is to try to turn this around and say that it was the Obama administration that was interfering in the election with these wiretaps and not really the Russians. I imagine that Trump will fall back on his old line of saying that his communications with the Russians were all about building a new relationship with them and there is nothing illegal or untoward with that. And that any investigation of those discussion with Russian that occurred during the campaign should be considered interference in the campaign. In the end, it will all depend on how incriminating those transcripts are. But the way that Trump and the GOP are glomming on to the Obama interference line makes it clear that they know there is something bad in those transcripts. and this is their way of trying to deflect their impact and give something to their base to hold on to when the transcripts come out.

Finally, it is important to point out that this is the typical response of an authoritarian regime to any investigation that gets close enough to threaten the regime’s legitimacy. The tactic is to paint the investigators as the illegal actors subverting the state and render them impotent. It is a method not only to shut down the current investigation but also to provide a warning to any new ones. Trump is declaring war on one of the legal mechanisms for running investigations in this country. Yes, we all know that the FISA process is horribly abused but it is the current law. And to attack that entire process as an example of political, anti-democratic behavior is a threat to the entire legal system we should all take very seriously.