AMID the growing support for a bipartisan and independent investigation to find out if there was/is collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign before, during and after the 2016 presidential elections, President Donald Trump woke up on the early morning of Saturday, March 4 to fire a barrage of tweets to accuse his predecessor, President Barack Obama, of wiretapping his phone in the Trump Tower.
Trump tweeted at 6:35 a.m. EST: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
At 7:04 a.m. EST, he followed with this bombastic tweet: “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Even his own cabinet and White House staff were blindsided by these tweets, unable to explain any basis for these toxic accusations against Pres. Obama. Sources from the White House, however, revealed that they had not seen Trump be this angry and frustrated following the releases of news reports exposing more of people in Trump camp who had met with the top Russian Ambassador secretly, before, during and after the election. Those individuals include National Security Adviser Michael Flynn who has resigned; his Attorney General Jeff Sessions (one of Trump’s surrogates during the campaign) who lied under oath about his two meetings with the Russian Ambassador; his own son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, among others.
All of the recent exposes were deemed to have grabbed the headlines from what Trump thought was his victorious moment delivering a “Presidential” speech to the joint session of Congress on February 28.
Press Secretary Sean Spicer and other White House staff had been defending the president, saying that there should be a congressional investigation on this wiretapping as the Russian alleged interference in the U.S. election was being investigated, even though they themselves could not substantiate Trump’s accusations against Obama.
The media, Democrats, and even some moderate Republicans have been demanding for the president’s basis before any taxpayer-funded investigations are done, especially in the light of FBI Director James Comey asking the Department of Justice to publicly reject Trump’s allegations that Obama ordered then President-elect Trump to be wiretapped, and U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes saying he had seen no evidence to support Trump’s allegations.
Obama’s former spokesperson Josh Earnest likewise refuted Trump’s claim, arguing that the president has no authority to unilaterally order wiretapping of any private citizen. The courts, however, may give such order if there is probable cause that such private citizen may be involved in a crime.
Trump reportedly got the information of such alleged wiretapping by Obama from the alt-right Breitbart News, yet he did not consult the FBI and U.S. intelligence about this.
If there is indeed real evidence to back up his accusations against Obama, why wouldn’t Trump release it? His tweets declaratively state that such wiretapping, in fact, happened, but where is his proof? As political experts explain, Trump is the president and he has the authority to declassify records to prove his allegations so long as the declassification of such record would not compromise national security.
Could this be another chapter of Trump’s growing list of conspiracy theories which had not been substantiated and proven to be true? He had started the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in Hawaii but in Kenya and was therefore not eligible to be President of the United States. He stated as a fact that there was massive cheating during the 2016 election and that about 3 million “illegals,” voted which would explain why he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
Trump also said he believes Obama has been orchestrating all the protest rallies against him to deligitimize his presidency. He had also been spreading the accusation that mainstream news media that are critical of him and his policies are “fake news” and are out there to undermine his Presidency, etc.
COULD IT ALSO BE that this is Trump’s clever scheming ploy to deflect the focus on the alleged Russia-Trump camp collusion, which is now under investigation, and to rally his base and keep their loyalty by once again making the narrative against the first black president of the United States?
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
