Not really.
FISA is limited in scope as to whom they can tap why and when they can do it as well...all of us on various forums hashed this out back when the left went ape sh*t over W wiretapping foreign terrorists phone calls into the U.S.
Remember the taps were on foreign phones trying to find out who the terrorists in Afghanistan and other places were talking to in the states.
If there was a legal wiretap on a Russian phone line or if one of our bugs in the Russian embassy recorded the conversation...then Trump's phones and Trump Tower wasn't bugged. The Russians were.
Again does anyone ever stop to think we're being distracted by a shiny object so we don't notice the real issue here?
Consider the matter of "reverse targeting"
https://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/paa-dispelling-myths.htmlIf it is as I am understanding you say, that the info collected happened in the course of legit surveillance of the Russians, then as soon as Trump or his associates were heard, short of their discussing criminal acts, the data should have been immediately destroyed, not archived for future use.
From link above:
3. MYTH: The Protect America Act allows the government to target Americans in the United States under the guise of surveilling a person located overseas – a practice known as "reverse targeting."
FACT: "Reverse targeting" was, and remains, prohibited by law.
FACT: The provisions of FISA that protect against this practice remain unchanged by the Protect America Act. The law excludes from the category of "electronic surveillance," and thus from the FISA warrant requirement, only surveillance directed at individuals reasonably believed to be in foreign countries.
FACT: "Reverse targeting" constitutes electronic surveillance and thus generally requires a court order under FISA. Nothing in the Protect America Act changes this.
FACT: "Reverse targeting" makes little sense as a matter of intelligence tradecraft. If the government believes a person in the United States is a terrorist, it is more useful to obtain a court order to collect all of the person's communications than to conduct surveillance on that person by listening only to a fragment of the person's calls to individuals overseas.
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And you can call it a "shiny object" all you want, that's an opinion. Did you think that the outcry over the IRS targeting conservative groups was a "shiny object"?
I have seen nothing in the reporting on this that any criminal wrongdoing was revealed; to the contrary, all the reporting I have read say there is / was NONE. But it's suitable fodder for innuendo and witch hunts.
