[RD] Donald Trump accuses Barack Obama of illegal wiretap; calls for investigation

[jackelgull]

That's on the system.

If you put a 5 year-old in charge and people take him seriously, you're going to have bad results. Insulting or ascribing malicious intent to the child doesn't do much to fix the problem of people taking him seriously.

The responsibilities and powers of the office of president of the US is too great to not take that 5 year old seriously. The system was designed around the assumption that a responsible if not necessarily ethical person would take charge.

 

[Zelig]

Reduce intelligence of hypothetical 5 year-old until it doesn't make any sense to take seriously. If you will, posit an intelligence-free typewriter that happens to independently generate fascistic diatribe.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, more 'Merika/world post 2001 :/

 

[Commodore]

There will be an investigation into Obama. It won't find anything but every piece of 'evidence' it produces will be disclosed to the public (even if it were illegal to do so as would be the case for classified information) and paraded about as definitive proof that Donald Trump is the second coming of Cheeto Jesus.

I know this is a RD thread, but I really have to ask: Was there a first Cheeto Jesus?

 

[Zkribbler]

On Saturday March 04 2017, President Donald J Trump has accused former president Barack H Obama of illegally wiretapping him on par to the scale of Watergate.

He has called for criminal prosecution of Barack Obama by a lawyer for illegal Watergate-esque wire tapping, tweeting the following statements:

Trump fails to understand the purpose of a congressional investigation. It is to gather information so that laws can be written, amended or repealed. However, the act of with Trump accuses Obama is already a crime. No new law is necessary. What President Trump needs do is to swear out a criminal complaint and sign it under penalty of perjury.. The New York justice system will handle the rest.

 

[BvBPL]

The Obama administration conducted a significant number of unjust and illegal wiretaps without warrants.

 

[Zkribbler]

How the hell am I supposed to talk about this in a RD thread? The correct response is an expletive filled tirade.

The proper response is not hot language but rather ice-cold logic.

 

[Kyriakos]

Leave Obama, go after dead-in-the-water Hillary to teach her not to tweet.

I saw this scenario on Nuclear War:

 

[onejayhawk]

Obama is Nixon, per Daily Beast.

It's a great headline, with a an article trying to refute the assertion.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...new-normal-obama-is-nixon-and-up-is-down.html

innonimatu has it right. The biggest scandal of the Obama administration may be the one breaking now.

Trump's no evidence accusations have nothing to do with the long-time surveillance state - I think we can all agree that such a status continued under Obama. Until there is something more than a series of tweets, it is not blind partisanship to assume that Trump is just blowing smoke.

How so, since you acknowledge that there was surveillance? This is a big snarl that is not going away anytime soon.

J

 

[El_Machinae]

There was malware detected trying to infiltrate Trump. That's what lead to the hypothesis that there was collusion between the Russians and someone with the Trump organization. That's what got it bumped up to an official investigation.

Manafort was forced out just as the reporters were trying to confirm details of the story.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...p_organization_communicating_with_russia.html

 

[Gori the Grey]

In the article to which El Mac directs us, as the cyber-geeks started reaching out to the involved individuals (Trump campaign and Alfabank), the server suddenly went dead, around Sept 21.

Rachel Maddow is following a story originally posted on DCReports that a Russian oligarch's plane kept showing up at the airports at which Trump's plane was.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russian-s-travel-examined-for-ties-to-trump-889988675966

If the phenomenon that DCReports is tracking started around the time server use had to be abandoned, well, the gun's getting smokier and smokier.

EDIT: Yep, poked around in the article a bit and the first established plane congruence was Nov. 3.

For our purposes, the intriguing thing is that this plane, normally based in Moscow and Switzerland, can be tracked. According the flight logs available from FlightRadar24, it made numerous flights all over the U.S. from August 2016 through November 2016, the peak season for the U.S. 2016 Presidential campaign – of course right at the moment when Moscow was supposedly trying to jack the election on Trump’s behalf.

Donald Trump’s airplane photographed in Charlotte, N.C., on Nov. 3.

Rybolovlev’s plane photographed at Charlotte airport, Nov. 3.

Moreover, in at least three cases, Airbus A319M-KATE showed up at very same airports, where candidate Trump was – in the North Carolina cities of Charlotte and Concord and in Las Vegas, for example. Indeed, in the case of Charlotte, local photographers took pictures of M-KATE and the Trump campaign jet at the very same airport on November 3, 2016. During a presidential campaign close aides often arrive before and after the candidate, times that overlap with the Rybolovlev jet in several cities.[82]

Local photographers took pictures of M-KATE and Trump’s Boeing 757 the Trump campaign jet at the same airport on November 3, 2016.

It's getting clearer and clearer that there's there there. Trump's calls for more vigorous investigation probably aren't serving his own interests.

 

[JollyRoger]

How so, since you acknowledge that there was surveillance? This is a big snarl that is not going away anytime soon.

J

We have had surveillance since the founding. That fact is no snarl at all.

 

[Kyriakos]

Why was the plane there? Russian oligarch has no internet? Alternatively, if he feared being hacked (but i thought Russia only hacks others and is immune to hacking) wouldn't he just send something more inconspicuous than an airplane and (i suppose) his own self?

I mean, ok, these stories are sort of strange by now. And given that protector of the realm Doland Baratheon is there to stay for a few years, i am not seeing what the point of this is.

 

[metalhead]

The Obama administration conducted a significant number of unjust and illegal wiretaps without warrants.

Unless those were directed by Obama himself, that fact is irrelevant to the subject matter of this weekend's tweets.

Obama is Nixon, per Daily Beast.

It's a great headline, with a an article trying to refute the assertion.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...new-normal-obama-is-nixon-and-up-is-down.htmln.

J

I know reading comprehension is not your strong suit, but the article is not trying to "refute the assertion." The "Up is Down" in the headline clearly asserts before you even dive into the article that Trump's claims are completely baseless and without any merit whatsoever.

Obama had as scandal-free an administration as any we've seen in a long time. Even that isn't enough to satisfy or persuade the not-racists like yourself.

 

[Kyriakos]

Unless those were directed by Obama himself, that fact is irrelevant to the subject matter of this weekend's tweets.



I know reading comprehension is not your strong suit, but the article is not trying to "refute the assertion." The "Up is Down" in the headline clearly asserts before you even dive into the article that Trump's claims are completely baseless and without any merit whatsoever.

Obama had as scandal-free an administration as any we've seen in a long time. Even that isn't enough to satisfy or persuade the not-racists like yourself.

So who is going to be the dem fall-guy this time? Some low staffer again?
Underwhelming.

 

[metalhead]

What fall guy? Nothing happened. There is absolutely zero evidence that any wiretapping was carried out without duly executed warrants. Until that changes this is nothing more than another Trump fever dream.

 

[Gori the Grey]

(1)Why was the plane there?

(2) Russian oligarch has no internet? Alternatively, if he feared being hacked (but i thought Russia only hacks others and is immune to hacking) wouldn't he just send something more inconspicuous than an airplane and (i suppose) his own self?

1) Yes, that's the question. Why does a Russian oligarch suddenly make a set of trips to various US cities at exactly the moment Trump's plane is at those cities?

2) That's the point of my mentioning the DCReport story in connection with El Mac's story. At the very moment that cyber-researchers are finding suspicious activity on a server that communicates solely between Trump and the Russians, that server goes silent, and a Russian oligarch starts making trips to a set of random (except for Trump's presence) US cities.

What I like best about how this is going to unravel is this moment right now when the various data points have all the appearance of a conspiracy theory!

Hoist with your own petard!

 

[Sommerswerd]

without duly executed warrants

This is the part that has been bugging me... Let's say that there was wiretapping going on, for sake of discussion. But that would mean they had probable cause that a) a crime was being committed, or; b) there was some secret communication going on with foreign agents

In either case, the wiretap would be lawful, and show that there was some a legit suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of the President or his campaign... Either Trump did not realize this when he made the accusation, or he is alleging that the wiretaps were (illegal) warrantless??

Or is he just trying to get ahead of the story, because he senses that this Russia thing is going to blow up in his face... That actually seems the most likely to me right now, that he is trying to pre-emptively discredit the Russia investigation by claiming "illegal surveillance was Obama's fault"...

So the narrative is already being built....Trump gets investigated/impeached... Thanks Obama!

 

[Kyriakos]

^Is it at all likely that Trump gets impeached a few months after he got elected, and in the current super-polarized climate as well?

 

[Sommerswerd]

No need to worry Kyr, the Republicans will protect him as long as they have a majority, which in all likelihood will be his entire term(s).

The House would have to vote against him (Impeachment) then the Senate (removal trial), only then could he be charged with a crime, but then his VP (now the sitting Pres) will obviously pardon him from any charges (which is what happened with Nixon).