re: Nunes: Formal, foreign surveillance was used on Trump; Obama admin surveilled associates

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What did Obama know and when did he know it!?!?!?!?!?!

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That's a logical question.

I still think it's fair to ask why the hell a rival political campaign was wiretapped during election season. The timing and circumstances are highly suspect.

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He said the intercepts he’s seen appear to be legal and weren’t targeted at the transition team or related to Russia. But he said he was troubled by the collection -- which he said was part of unrelated foreign surveillance -- and the fact that the intelligence community reported the names of transition team members internally.

bloomberg.com/politics

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"Not related to Russia" is the BOOM that some in this thread are failing to see.

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Be specific, what did I state earlier in the thread that you think isn't supported by what Nunes said today?

Let me tell you. I was in on this game before I retired. It's VERY easy to manipulate a warrant to get phone calls and such which are at best tangential to the case you are actually working on. Judges allow some fishing to go on.

That probably goes double or a hundred fold when you are asking on behalf of the President of the US.

Having lived in this world and knowing how DC works, I find it very likely that the incidental part of this was purposely done for plausible deniability , and nothing more.

I also suspect that nearly every one on this board who is screaming "Trump is a liar" would hold the opposite opinion had it been a Republican President caught spying on a Dem President Elect.

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Nunes said that the information gathered was from incidental collection during surveillance of foreign powers or agents of foreign powers. That's a far cry from the Trump campaign being directly targeted for surveillance.

Your conclusion that this foreign surveillance's true motive was to spy on the Trump campaign is your own speculation--nothing that Nunes said gives any substantive support to that conclusion. You're doing the mathematical equivalent of taking two data points and extrapolating into infinity, for the purpose of confirming what you already believe to be true because of the president's tweets.

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"Not related to Russia" is the BOOM that some in this thread are failing to see.

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Well, I pointed it out multiple times in this thread

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If there was a FISA warrant, Obama knew. You can quote plausible deniability all you want, but there's no way the president of the United States would not be aware of surveillance of a political opponent in an ongoing election. He let it happen.

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Of course he knew. But there's no need for him to cite plausible deniability. Trump never accused him of knowing.

Trump tweeted a specific accusation that Obama was able to categorically deny. That's Trump's error.

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Nunes said that the information gathered was from incidental collection during surveillance of foreign powers or agents of foreign powers. That's a far cry from the Trump campaign being directly targeted for surveillance.

Your conclusion that this foreign surveillance's true motive was to spy on the Trump campaign is your own speculation--nothing that Nunes said gives any substantive support to that conclusion. You're doing the mathematical equivalent of taking two data points and extrapolating into infinity, for the purpose of confirming what you already believe to be true because of the president's tweets.

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Nunes said his new information appears to show that additional members of the Trump transition team — beyond former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — were unmasked. This means they were identified in U.S. intelligence reports.

He said the information that he had seen and was disseminated across the intelligence community appeared to him to have "little or no apparent intelligence value.

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This means they were identified in U.S. intelligence reports.

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Which also means a clear violation of law.

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appear to be legal and weren’t targeted at the transition team


this is also being ignored

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If it wasn't targeted at the Trump transition team and unrelated to Russia-- then why were their names shown in intel instead of American Citizen 1?

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Of course he knew. But there's no need for him to cite plausible deniability. Trump never accused him of knowing. Trump tweeted a specific accusation that Obama was able to categorically deny. That's Trump's error.

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Which all goes back to lawyer word play. Obama did in fact let the wiretaps happen, and that's what Trump's statement could be interpreted as for normal people. The literal meaning of the statement can be denied in a court of law, sure. Trump could've been more specific in his statement.

This does not get them out of the water though. A political opponent in an election was being spied on.

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If it wasn't targeted at the Trump transition team and unrelated to Russia-- then why were their names shown in intel instead of American Citizen 1?

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I don't know.

That is what we need to know.