WSJ: Obama now owes the US an explanation for a historic abuse of IC surveillance powers

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Mueller and the Obama Accounting
The former President now owes the country an explanation for the historic abuse of government surveillance powers.
By James Freeman
March 25, 2019

The Mueller report confirms that the Obama administration, without evidence, turned the surveillance powers of the federal government against the presidential campaign of the party out of power. This historic abuse of executive authority was either approved by President Barack Obama or it was not. It’s time for Mr. Obama, who oddly receives few mentions in stories about his government’s spying on associates of the 2016 Trump campaign, to say what he knew and did not know about the targeting of his party’s opponents.

If he was briefed, for example, on plans by the Justice Department to seek wiretaps on Trump campaign associates, it’s hard to believe Mr. Obama would not have been highly interested in the matter. Going all the way back to his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, Mr. Obama had aggressively advocated for preventing federal abuse of surveillance powers.
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What has always seemed clear is that Mr. Obama never actually believed the now-discredited claim that the Trump campaign worked with Russia to rig the 2016 U.S. elections. In April of 2017, three months after Mr. Obama left office, this column noted that the former President had offered little criticism of the new President . . .

If Mr. Obama never bought into the collusion conspiracy theory, then the question is why he endorsed or allowed the use of federal surveillance tools against the party out of power—a direct threat to the democratic process that is at the heart of our country’s greatness.

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