Can You Hear Me Now?

Another day, another tweet, another scandal.

To say that President Trump is off to a rocky start is at this point rather like complaining that your white shoes got a bit wet on the deck of the Titanic.

I've made no secret that I am not a big fan of Trump. I didn't vote for him, which given that I feel his prime opponent in 2016 was just about the most awful candidate for president in forever should indicate how unready I thought (and think) he is.

The most recent scandal involves a week-end tweet in which Trump claims that former President Barack Obama tapped his phones in an effort to spy on him. Apparently, to try to get some dirt to put on the new president for purported collusion with shadowy Russian figures who were trying to "hack" (sic) the election.

THAT is an entirely different story, and yes, I agree with Trump that the claim of Russian election hacking is fake news.

Of course, the press have rushed to defend the old administration, once again portraying Trump as a lying, paranoid madman who is dangerously wobbling on an ever more eccentric axis. The accusation that the ex-President would order spying on the new seems, well crazy.

But is it?

Much of the noise stems from accusations leaked in the press about conversations between former security head Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. According to a series of reports in the Washington Post (new motto: Democracy Dies in Darkness).

The FBI in late December reviewed intercepts of communications between the Russian ambassador to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn — national security adviser to then-President-elect Trump — but has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government, U.S. officials said.
The calls were picked up as part of routine electronic surveillance of Russian officials and agents in the United States, which is one of the FBI’s responsibilities, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss counterintelligence operations.

Nonetheless, the fact that communications by a senior member of Trump’s national security team have been under scrutiny points up the challenge facing the intelligence community as it continues its wide-ranging probe of Russian government influence in the U.S. election and whether there was any improper back-channel contacts between Moscow and Trump associates and acquaintances. (emphasis added)

Somehow, the FBI did "intercept communications" involving not Trump himself, but one of his top operatives. How did the FBI come into possession of this "communication?" It's instructive to note that the FBI at the time decided that there was "no evidence of wrondgoing." They just happened to listen in on a conversation involving an American citizen.

There is an interesting treatment of all of this in the Ezra Klein's blog Vox.

Questions about Flynn’s relationship with Russia go all the way back to the campaign, where he served as one of Trump’s top national security staffers. 

Another report, CBS news, quotes an un-named former national security advisor that the Obama administration back in July (and again in October) went to the FISA courts to obtain wiretaps, not for Trump himself but perhaps for key figures in his campaign. The July request was denied, but no comments were made about the October request.

It's instructive to recall that, during the George W Bush administration, the president was widely attacked from the left for abusing wiretaps outside of the jurisdiction of the FISA. Then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced a court case against the liberal Electronic Freedom Foundation. President Obama sought to continue the surveillance, which eventually was deemed unconstitutional.

The bottom line is this: IF the FBI try to wiretap a "foreign agent," and a U.S. citizen is on the line, they must have a warrant to continue listening. Did the FBI have a warrant to listen in on the conversations including Flynn? Or Jeff Sessions, for that matter?

It seems very unlikely that President Obama himself ordered the phones to be tapped; it seems equally unlikely that Trump Tower was bugged.

There is a quite provocative piece on the whole mess today at National Review Online. Granted, National Review is a fairly partisan Republican journal, but in the article, Kevin McCarthy raises the right questions about the proper role of the Justice Department, the FISA courts, and surveilling our citizens.

President Obama's defenders reacted to Trump's tweet with the typical sturm und drang, including the defence that the president would never order "surveillance against American citizens," which is rubbish. The president himself ordered the killing of American citizens with drones during his time in the White House without so much as looking at a judge.

If the FBI - or anyone else - have any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives to steal and distribute damaging emails from the Clinton campaign, then I think it's time we hear it. Specifically. That is what is behind all of this. As they say, it's about time to put up or shut up. And I am not talking about Trump shooting his mouth off sarcastically about how Putin might find Hillary's deleted emails.

Am I concerned that, perhaps, the president is too cozy with the Russian government? Of course, I am. But I am far more concerned that people within the government, for partisan reasons, have spied on American citizens, obtained information that isn't criminal but does support a flimsy narrative of stolen elections, and then illegally leaked that information to a complicit media who, for eight years, basically acted as apologists for the government but have now "discovered" that it's the role of the press to challenge the president, not suck up to him.

So no - the tweets do not concern me. They are not chilling attacks on the First Amendment. Rather, the behaviour of unelected agents within the government seem a direct assault on the Fourth and the Fifth Amendments.

And it really troubles me that people who, until recently, seemed to care about protecting us from the watchful eye of big brother are now waving their pom-pons on the sidelines cheering it on.

Perhaps Trump is paranoid, but maybe the old maxim that even paranoids have real enemies has a whiff of truth?