TRUMP SHOULD TELL WHAT HE KNOWS
It is incumbent upon President Donald Trump to put up or shut up when it comes to claims that former President Barack Obama authorized wiretaps on Trump Tower during the election.
We don’t doubt the former president might have used the powers of his office to undermine the then-Republican candidate, but the spying charge is too serious to fire off in a tweet without evidence. Indeed, he should have used as many tweets as it took — one tweet is only 140 characters, after all — to explain how he knew such a thing occurred.
Without evidence, which Trump explains will come to light in a congressional investigation, he looks desperate in trying to deflect interest in Democratic charges his campaign somehow colluded with Russians to steer the presidential election his way.
To date, Democrats themselves have shown nothing that indicates there was such collusion. Indeed, they had been the ones who had begun looking desperate until the president plunged in with his charges.
Trump said the wiretapping at the New York City building where he maintains his residence and ran the presidential transition occurred in October.
It is unclear where the charges originated, but anonymously sourced British reports, conservative websites and various blogs have claimed Obama administration officials had obtained a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to review contacts between computers at the Republican candidate’s New York headquarters and a Russian bank.
Republican lawmakers said over the weekend they will include Trump’s claim in their investigation of Russian campaign meddling. Meanwhile, the president maintains he will be vindicated. “This will be investigated,” Trump said, according to a conversation Newsmax Chief Executive Officer Christopher Ruddy wrote Sunday that he had with the president. “This will all come out. I will be proven right.”
Ruddy said the media should have concentrated on the fact neither Obama nor his administration officials didn’t deny the Trump Tower was wiretapped, only that Obama was not behind it.
“Wouldn’t it strain belief that a major presidential candidate’s offices were wiretapped and the president was never informed?” he wrote.
Obama himself offered a lawyerly denial that only took the White House out of the mix (but not the FISA court, which orders such surveillance).
“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” his statement said. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway continued the insistence on Monday, though she wouldn’t reveal where Trump first learned of the information and mentioned only “credible news sources.”
“He’s the president of the United States, [so] he has information and intelligence that the rest of us do not,” she said on Fox News.
In that case, Trump should provide the American people a measure of proof of such a charge. He should reveal how he knows what he says he knows and any details that give the congressional investigation more teeth.
If there is not evidence or congressional investigators can find no evidence, it looks worse for the president than if he’d said nothing at all.
We believe, and the American people who voted for him believe, Trump has more important things to do than fire off petulant tweets. His backers, after all, have been able to cheer at his revelations of companies that want to add jobs since he was elected, at the lowering of costs of military jets at his behest, at his efforts to keep the country safe by ordering immigration laws enforced, and with his desire to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Unfortunately, a now expanded investigation only ensures the Russian story has legs longer than anything the president does that is positive.
And unproven charges against Obama can only go so far. Yes, many people who voted for the New York businessman in November did so because of the former president’s agenda, his executive actions and his pitting one group of Americans against another. But remember how tiresome Obama’s blame of the country’s troubles on former President George W. Bush became? It went on well beyond his first term in office.
Despite Trump’s random tweets, his calling out of those with whom he disagrees and his general bombast, we believe many Americans are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he continues to work hard for the people, the ones he promised are his first priority.
But continued charges that can’t be proven strain credulity and break down trust. That’s not helpful for an administration with real promise.