FermanMonteRae

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

Today’s news just got a bit more interesting. This morning, Donald Trump made a series of tweets about Obama tapping his phones during the election. These tweets have rather surprised experts (and especially members of Congress), since they are either (a) confused ranting based on a Breitbart article about something he actually has the power to know about, or (b) that he just publicly acknowledged that there was a classified FISA warrant to tap the phones of his campaign staff.

Now, there’s no law against him admitting this; as Rep. Himes (D-CT) of the House Intelligence Committee notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xHlhM-WrDI), he is the ultimate declassification authority and has every right to do this. But what’s gotten a lot of people worried – such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), whose official statement is below – is that while FISA may be one of the most secretive and unaccountable parts of the entire US legal system, its judges do take their legal responsibilities quite seriously, and a wiretap warrant requires a showing of probable cause.

(And especially given post-Watergate laws and post-Watergate sensitivities, walking up to a court and saying “Hi, I want to wiretap a major political party’s headquarters during a Presidential election” is going to get you some very dirty looks. The bar for probable cause will not be set low.)

Now, the existence of such a warrant has been rumored for some time – here’s some reporting on it from early November, before the election. (https://heatst.com/world/exclusive-fbi-granted-fisa-warrant-covering-trump-camps-ties-to-russia/) It would also explain many things about how the FBI was aware of Flynn’s secret conversations with Russian officials.

But there’s a difference between rumors and official confirmation – and if President Trump really did just announce its existence, then there is good reason for the public to want to know, as Sen. Sasse says, just what was in the application for this warrant, and how the applying agency established probable cause. Because this means that the investigating agency had solid evidence of criminal collaboration with a foreign power.

Note that this is very different from evidence that they talked to Russians; talking to Russians is fine. Talking to Russian politicians is fine. There are quite a lot of members of the government whose job is nothing but talking to Russian politicians. We’re talking about conversations which would be evidence of serious crimes – and given that we’re talking about FISA warrants, crimes which jeopardize national security.

Combined with previous reports such as this one (https://nyti.ms/2jFcK0n), a fairly clear picture is emerging: the FBI has been systematically investigating illegal connections between Trump’s organization and the Russian government for some time, and back in October had sufficient evidence to get a wiretap warrant in the middle of an election season, which is no small bar. On several occasions since the election (most notably that of NatSec advisor Michael Flynn) administration officials have denied various contacts, only to be immediately contradicted by leaks which appeared to have not only confirmation of such contacts, but details.

What this adds up to is not an investigation of any single individual, but an investigation with solid evidence pointing at the breadth of the senior levels of the Trump organization being directly involved in criminal activities.

It means there’s a very, very, large shoe waiting to drop. And I have no idea what will happen when it does; this is a situation literally unprecedented in American history.