{"id":6860,"date":"2017-03-04T10:45:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-04T18:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/03\/04\/news-651\/"},"modified":"2017-03-04T10:45:05","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T18:45:05","slug":"news-651","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/03\/04\/news-651\/","title":{"rendered":"If the Feds Did Wiretap Trump Tower, It&#8217;s Not Obama Who Should Worry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/GettyImages-631861118-660x440.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit to Author: Brian Barrett| Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2017 17:56:59 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<article class='content link-underline relative body-copy' data-js='content' itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>It started, like so many eruptions these days, with a tweet.<\/p>\n<p>Early Saturday morning, President Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing, without evidence, former President\u00a0Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in the month before the election. Trump compared the alleged snooping to \u201cNixon\/Watergate,\u201d and intimated legal action.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Is it legal for a sitting President to be &quot;wire tapping&quot; a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/837993273679560704\">March 4, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What makes the broader allegation so extraordinary isn\u2019t that it is new. Quite the contrary. Various reports that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted\u00a0Justice Department investigators\u00a0a warrant to probe the Trump campaign\u2019s ties with Russia surfaced in\u00a0November. What makes Trump&#8217;s Twitter tirade so striking is what prompted it, and what it might imply if it&#8217;s true.<\/p>\n<h3>Anatomy of an Allegation<\/h3>\n<p>Baffling as it may be, it appears Trump\u2019s accusation stems from a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/big-government\/2017\/03\/03\/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump\/\">article published on Breitbart<\/a>, the conservative news outlet formerly run by White House senior adviser Stephen Bannon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a somewhat stunning, in so far as the president of the United States doesn&#8217;t need to get his information about classified activity from Breitbart,&#8221; says Cato Institute fellow Julian Sanchez.<\/p>\n<p>That story, &#8220;Mark Levin to Congress: Investigate Obama\u2019s &#8216;Silent Coup&#8217; Vs. Trump,&#8221; rehashes comments the titular conservative radio host made\u00a0Thursday\u00a0equating the previously reported FISA warrant with a \u201cpolice state\u201d and accuses Obama of a politically motivated, covert attempt to undermine Trump and his associates.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear just what prompted Levin\u2019s rant, or why Trump glommed onto it. Although no one has confirmed a FISA investigation, or wiretaps in Trump Tower, \u00a0several\u00a0news outlets have reported its existence. The most detailed account thus\u00a0far, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-38589427\">from the BBC<\/a> in January, provided a timeline: The Justice Department sought a FISA warrant in June to intercept communications from two Russian banks suspected of facilitating donations to the Trump campaign. The judge reportedly rejected the warrant, and a narrower version sought in July. A new judge granted the order in mid-October, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n<p data-js=\"fader\" class=\"pullquote carve fader\"> \tHowever strongly Trump feels that he\u2019s right, he\u2019d better hope he\u2019s wrong.\t<span class=\"attribution\"><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>None of this necessarily makes Trump&#8217;s allegations true. Even if a FISA warrant exists, it does not mean Trump Tower is tapped or that Trump specifically is the target. Further complicating things, the existence of a wiretap would not necessarily confirm the existence of a FISA warrant. Almost half of the of buildings 58 floors are dedicated to commercial and office space, and any one of them&#8212;no to mention the building&#8217;s residents&#8212;could be the target of an\u00a0investigation unrelated to international espionage or election tampering.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If he has evidence that he was wiretapped without a proper FISA order being sought, that would be a huge scandal, and he should produce whatever evidence he\u2019s got,&#8221; says Sanchez. &#8220;It\u2019s a pretty serious claim, and it\u2019s striking he would make it without anything solid to back it up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Look past the president&#8217;s conspiracy theories, though, and one fact stands out: However strongly Trump feels that he\u2019s right, he\u2019d better hope he\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n<h3>Tower of FISA<\/h3>\n<p>If nothing else, Trump\u2019s tweets show\u00a0he doesn\u2019t understand how the FISA system works. If he did, he may have limited himself to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/838016045222854656\">tweeting about Arnold Schwartzenegger<\/a> quitting <em>The Apprentice\u00a0<\/em>this morning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile the order would have been requested by some part of the executive branch, Obama can\u2019t order anything. Nor can Trump,\u201d says former NSA lawyer April Doss, who stresses that her comments are based only on public information. \u201cThe order has to come from the court, and the court operates independently.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>FISA court judges receive\u00a0lifetime appointments, so the court\u2019s composition can&#8217;t\u00a0ebb and flow with the political tides. What&#8217;s more, specific laws adopted in the wake of Watergate prevent the very activity Trump accuses Obama of.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t tap the phones of a political candidate for political purposes,\u201d says Doss.<\/p>\n<p>What you <em>could<\/em> you tap them for? Acting as a foreign power, or as an agent of a foreign power. In other words, spying against US interests with both knowledge and intent.<\/p>\n<p>Clearing that bar is difficult, by design. FISA warrants don\u2019t allow for broad wiretaps of, say, every call going in and out of a specific office in a 58-story Manhattan skyscraper. Federal authorities must\u00a0demonstrate not just probable cause, but that a given phone line serves primarily to undermine US interests. It\u2019s difficult, for instance, to obtain a warrant to wiretap a shared office, for fear of picking up innocent third-party conversations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have high confidence that a FISA court judge would not have authorized any warrant unless it met all the requirements under the statute,\u201d says Doss.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s wiretap claims, then, carry\u00a0presumably inadvertent implications. First, based on previous reporting and the nature of FISA courts, any wiretaps within\u00a0Trump Tower are legal.\u00a0And\u00a0they stem from overwhelming evidence that the Trump campaign, or someone within it, has unsavory ties to Russia or another\u00a0foreign power. Otherwise, it\u2019s unlikely those wiretaps would exist at all.<\/p>\n<p>If federal authorities did have cause to listen in on Trump Tower, though, and they provided enough evidence for a FISA court to approve the snooping, Obama is not the one who ought\u00a0to worry.<\/p>\n<p><em>With additional reporting by Andy Greenberg.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2017\/03\/feds-wiretap-trump-tower-not-obama-worry\/\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/www.wired.com\/category\/security\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Credit to Author: Brian Barrett| Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2017 17:56:59 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"rss_thumbnail\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/GettyImages-631861118-660x440.jpg\" alt=\"If the Feds Did Wiretap Trump Tower, It&#8217;s Not Obama Who Should Worry\" \/><\/div>\n<p>President Trump made extraordinary claims about Obama wiretapping Trump Tower. If true, it may say more about Trump and his associates. The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2017\/03\/feds-wiretap-trump-tower-not-obama-worry\/\">If the Feds Did Wiretap Trump Tower, It&#8217;s Not Obama Who Should Worry<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\">WIRED<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10378,10607],"tags":[148,11525,11051,714,10442,10614,152],"class_list":["post-6860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-wired","tag-donald-trump","tag-fisa","tag-national-affairs","tag-security","tag-spying","tag-threat-level","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}