The controversial FISA memo, a GOP-drafted documents alleging surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign, generated an expansive array of responses from political commentators and pundits when it was released last week. After discussing the FISA memo, Fox News’s Judge Jeanine Pirro told viewers last Saturday that Trump was “right from the beginning.”
The FISA memo Pirro referenced right before her “opening statement” does not provide new proof on whether or not then-candidate Donald Trump was being surveilled or if Trump Tower was being wiretapped.
Instead, the memo covers how a FISA warrant was obtained by the FBI for electronic surveillance of campaign adviser Carter Page (who was no longer with the campaign when the warrant was obtained).
Was Trump “right from the beginning” as Pirro says?
On March 4 of last year, Trump tweeted that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
There is currently no proof that confirms Trump’s accusation that Obama ordered Trump Tower be wiretapped.
Was Trump being spied on?
While Paul Manafort and Carter Page were being investigated by the FBI during the election season, there is no evidence that Trump himself was being surveilled.
During the election season the FBI investigated Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort as “part of the FBI’s efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives” CNN reported last September.
Sources told CNN that the FBI previously investigated Manafort in 2014 for “work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine’s former ruling party.” Manafort was subsequently charged with conspiracy and money-laundering (among other things) in October 2017 per an indictment handed down by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The FBI was wiretapping Manafort, but there is no evidence that the FBI wiretapped Trump Tower during this investigation. It is also unclear if any conversations between Manafort and Trump were picked up during the FBI’s surveillance.
There is currently no proof that the FBI was spying on Trump or that they wiretapped Trump Towers.
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