Blind to the Truth

The media and pundrity are still trumpeting outrage about Trump’s accusation “without any evidence” that the Obama administration eavesdropped on the Trump campaign. They are oblivious to their own willingness to disseminate a “dossier” produced by a discredited British former spy accusing Trump of sexual misconduct in Russia, for which they cheerfully admit there is no evidence of validity.

It never fails to astonish me the willingness of the media and punditry to step over a dollar to pick up a dime, in that the resignation of Michael Flynn was caused by an intelligence agency disclosing the content of a conversation that he had with Vladimir Putin that they knew because they had recorded it. These idiots were so excited about what Michael Flynn may or may not have said in that phone conversation that they completely ignored the glaring fact that an intelligence agency recorded it.

As if that were not sufficient evidence, all one had to do was read the New York Times on February 14th, in which they reported that, “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” The second paragraph begins, "American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications..."

How much evidence does one need? The Obama administration used intercepted phone calls to accuse Trump of wrongdoing, and then is outraged when Trump accuses them of intercepting his phone calls.

CBS News palmed that off as “routine monitoring of foreign nationals,” but that is wildly inaccurate. When one end of the conversation is an American citizen the eavesdropper needs a warrant. Period. If the eavesdropper is monitoring the call of a foreign national and discovers than an American is on the line it is required that monitoring cease immediately unless a warrant is in hand for that American.

So either the intelligence had a warrant for Trump campaign staffers, in which case Trump’s accusation is true, or they were intercepting calls illegally, in which case Trump’s accusation is true. The media and punditry, of course, are blind to any of this.