Is Trump's 'Wiretap' Claim Vindicated?

Trump makes a very specific charge here: That he, Donald Trump, was personally the target of surveillance at his home or office in Trump Tower, during the election. He made clear his specific meaning in several follow-up tweets. “Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier,” Trump wrote. (No further information has shed light on why Trump believed Obama had been turned down by a court earlier.) “I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October,” he wrote. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process.”

There were two major problems with the accusation. First, Trump offered no evidence to support them. Second, the system is set up to prevent politically motivated surveillance by requiring that judges sign off any surveillance warrant, meaning a president could not simply order a wiretap (or any other form of eavesdropping). Recent White Houses have made it a rule not to interfere with the Justice Department, though Trump himself has on occasion broken that barrier.

CNN’s scoop doesn’t say at all what Trump did. According to that report, officials twice obtained warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on Manafort. Though the Trump campaign initially hired him for his delegate-counting expertise—he helped Gerald Ford defeat a floor fight for the GOP nomination against Ronald Reagan in 1976—he has spent much of his career working for unsavory world leaders. Most recently, that included Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin client who was forced out as president of Ukraine in a popular revolution in 2014. There are already questions about what and how Manafort was paid for that work. Starting in 2014, per CNN, he was subject to FBI surveillance over lobbying work on behalf of Yanukovych’s party.

That surveillance ended because of lack of evidence before Manafort joined Trump’s campaign in March 2016. But at some point last year—it’s not clear when—the FBI obtained a new warrant and began surveilling Manafort once again. It’s unknown as of yet whether that began while Manafort was working for Trump or after he departed the campaign in August. CNN says somewhat vaguely, “Sources say the second warrant was part of the FBI's efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives.” Manafort reportedly stayed in touch with Trump through Trump’s inauguration, but they have since stopped talking.

The existence of two separate warrants cleared through courts contradicts the claim that Obama ordered the surveillance. Adding another wrinkle to the story, Trump claimed that he had been “wiretapped” at Trump Tower, and Manafort also kept an apartment in the building, but it is not known whether the FBI surveilled that property. Manafort also owns several other homes; there are accusations that some of them may have been used for money-laundering, while The New York Times reported that FBI agents picked a lock to conduct a no-knock raid on an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

But even though Trump’s claim that Obama was targeting him remains without proof, CNN’s Manafort scoop leaves open the possibility that Trump was caught up in surveillance while speaking with Manafort. CNN was unable to learn the answer, and no other outlets have gotten any further.

That wouldn’t vindicate Trump’s claim, but it would be significant. It could mark the first time that a presidential nominee was swept up in surveillance. It isn’t altogether uncommon for Americans who are not subject to surveillance to be caught up in conversations with targets. When that happens, intelligence officials are required to redact their names, and they can only be revealed if certain officials ask for them to be “unmasked.” The names of some Trump team members are known to have been unmasked by Obama officials, though there’s no sign that Trump was among them. There’s no public evidence that any of those unmaskings were improper.

The idea that intelligence officials might have been listening to Trump is disconcerting from any angle. It’s deeply concerning to think that intelligence officials could have been listening in on Trump, and even more concerning if they had strong and legitimate reasons for doing so.

The prospect of intelligence officials using secretly obtained information for leverage on a president or president-elect is chilling, yet if Manafort, or anyone else around Trump, was in violation of the law—and the FISA court would have approved the warrant only if it decided there was probable cause to believe Manafort was in contact with an agent of a foreign power—they should be prosecuted, and their presence brings into question Trump’s hiring practices and the behavior of his campaign team. There are, of course, serious questions about the actions of several other team members, including Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, and Carter Page.

It’s also possible that ultimately no one is convicted of any crimes. As yet, there is very little known about why Manafort was under surveillance and what that surveillance found—one of many areas in which speculation about Mueller’s moves far outpace actual facts. In his March tweet, Trump declared, “Nothing found!” Mueller’s investigation will determine whether that claim is any more true than his still-unproven allegation that Obama ordered him surveilled for political reasons.