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President Trump has accused former President Obama of... something:
In a string of tweets posted early Saturday morning, President Trump let loose a barrage of accusations at his predecessor. He alleged that former President Obama had his "wires tapped" in Trump Tower before Election Day last year, accusing Obama of "McCarthyism" and being a "bad (or sick) guy."
Trump, who is under significant scrutiny for his administration's contacts with Russia before he took office, offered no evidence to support his claims Saturday morning. Neither the White House nor Obama's office has responded immediately to NPR's requests for comment.
[...] Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Also at WaPo, NYT, Reuters, Fox News, BBC, and Snopes, which hints that it may be related to this story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @11:45AM (4 children)
That's what Trump wants to hide, god damn traitor.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @03:38PM (3 children)
Here is a 30 second clip of Paul Manafort (Trump's campaign manager at the time) totally blowing it when asked if Trump has financial connections to russia. [youtube.com]
Even before the election there was a lot of evidence that Trump was bailed out of bankruptcy by dirty russian money which he laundered for them:
The shadowy Russian émigré touting Trump [ft.com]
— US election raises ghosts of cold war-era spy games
Dirty money: Trump and the Kazakh connection [ft.com]
— FT probe finds evidence a Trump venture has links to alleged laundering network
US election: Trump’s Russian riddle [ft.com]
— The Republican nominee became the face of Bayrock, a developer with roots in the Soviet Union
Former Mafia-linked figure describes association with Trump [washingtonpost.com]
The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections [the-american-interest.com]
— Did the American people really know they were putting such a “well-connected” guy in the White House?
In 2008, Trump's son said this: [washingtonpost.com]
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia”
More recently:
Wilbur Ross Comes to D.C. With an Unexamined History of Russian Connections [dcreport.org]
— Trump’s Choice for Commerce Secretary Holds a Top Post With a Mysterious, Russian-Controlled Cyprus Bank
TLDR version [thedailybeast.com]
———————————————————
Putin's goal [vox.com] has been to weaken the US, NATO and EU because they are all challenges to his vision of Russia (US as an example of democracy versus his autocracy, NATO as a military threat to Russian dominance in eastern Europe and the EU as an example of successful free markets versus oligarch dominance right next door).
He also blamed Clinton for perceived meddling in his election. [politico.com]
If you want this AC's opinion - Putin made a deal with Trump, he would wipe clean his debts to russia in exchange for two things:
Neither Putin nor Trump expected to actually win. Trump was happy to take the free money to run what he thought would be the greatest PR campaign for his personal brand ever. And because neither side actually expected he would win they were kind of sloppy about covering their tracks because nobody investigates you for losing an election.
So when he did win, Trump's team freaked out. And that's why Flynn and Sessions and Trump himself keep lying about there being absolutely no contacts with Russia. Its the "deny everything" approach even when denying some utterly normal contacts with russia because its really hard to tell a self-consistent complex lie, so people just default to denying everything. Sessions testimony during the senate confirmation was really weird [90 second video]. [youtube.com] Franken asks him "What would you do if some on Trump's team did have connections to russia? " and Sessions responds with "I have no connections to Russia" - it sounds like he knew about others with russia connections and wanted to isolate himself from them. But the really damning thing is that in the standard written follow-up to a confirmation testimony he had the opportunity to clarify and did not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @04:16PM (2 children)
Looked quickly at your links and you seem to have missed this one which I found by following the SN link at the end of OP to
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10 [slate.com] /was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
This is the "Alfa Bank" story.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
I left that one out because its much less solid, as the follow-up by the same reporter indicates. [slate.com]
I think it is important to note in these days of the media being accused of being misleading, it was the same reporter who gathered together and summarized all the criticisms of his original reporting and that follow-up article was linked at the head of the original article for anyone stumbling across it. That's what journalistic standards in action look like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06 2017, @03:24AM
Perhaps a little "less solid", but the author ends by basically standing by his initial story. The trail must be pretty stale by now...