https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/03/06/andy-mccarthys-timeline-of-obamas-trump-surveillance/Andy McCarthy’s Timeline of Obama’s Trump Surveillance
Mar 6, 2017
RUSH: Andy McCarthy wrote a piece on Saturday: “The Obama Camp’s Disingenuous Denials on FISA Surveillance of Trump.” Now, Andy’s been writing about this shall we say “scandal,” uncovered scandal, for months. Trump’s tweet on Saturday morning exploded that scandal in front of everybody’s face.
“The fact that the Obama Justice Department and the FBI investigated associates of Donald Trump, and likely Trump himself, in the heat of the presidential campaign.” That is something that we know happened; there isn’t any question about it; there isn’t any ambiguity about it. It simply wasn’t reported in mainstream Drive-By circles. “To summarize, reporting indicates that, prior to June 2016, the Obama Justice Department and FBI considered a criminal investigation of Trump associates, and perhaps Trump himself, based on concerns about connections to Russian financial institutions.”
This is June, last year. “Preliminary [investigations by the Obama Justice Department] indicated that there was nothing criminal involved.” It’s important to remember something here. The FBI has two different kinds of investigations. They do criminal investigations where they go after bad guys, and if they’re found guilty, they go to jail or pay a fine. They lose their liberty, lose their freedom. It’s criminal. The other thing the FBI does is related to national security, and there’s nothing criminal about that.
Now, the president is not constitutionally permitted to interfere in criminal investigations. That would be very unethical, not allowed. In some cases, the president has no right to know. But when it comes to national security like seeking a FISA warrant or whenever the DOJ and the FBI are doing anything related to national security, the president has every right to know about it. He runs the executive branch. National security is his bailiwick. Now, the left is trying to confuse people by conflating these two different types of investigations and claiming, “Well, Obama couldn’t have known. Presidents can’t get involved in criminal investigations!”
This is not criminal. Obama could very well have known about every stage of whatever was done to Trump. He could have ordered it. He could have requested it. He could have asked for it with plausible deniability, or he could have been told about it after somebody else instigated it. But it’s not prohibited that he know when it comes to national security what the FBI’s doing and the DOJ in that area. So here’s the thing.
After this first investigation in June — which was, again, investigating whether or not Trump or his associates has been involved with Russian financial institutions. That investigation went nowhere; it found nothing. Instead of shutting “the case down, though, the Obama Justice Department converted it into a national-security investigation.” See? It starts criminal. Nothing there. So then they say, “You know what? We’re gonna make this a national security thing!” Then they went to the FISA court.
