Ex-aides say Trump has long worried about recorded calls
WASHINGTON - Long before he tweeted about wiretaps, Donald Trump worried about who was listening in on his calls.
As a real estate mogul and reality TV star — well before he alleged on Twitter that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones during the campaign — Trump expressed regular concern that his phone lines were not secure, according to three former Trump Organization executives.
At times he talked about possible listening devices and worried that he was being monitored, two executives said. In other times, he was doing the monitoring. One of the executives said Trump occasionally taped his own phone conversations using an old-school tape recorder, although Trump once denied this.
“I assume when I pick up my telephone, people are listening to my conversations anyway, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Dec. 1, 2015, when asked about NSA spying powers. “It’s pretty sad commentary, but I err on the side of security.”
The former Trump Organization employees, whose collective tenure with the company spanned decades, detailed Trump’s concern for surveillance on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution for disclosing internal practices.
Trump is hardly the only private businessperson concerned with security, experts said.
Rob Kimmons, a Houston, Texasbased private investigator hired by Trump to monitor the activities of another private detective his first wife had hired during their divorce, said wealthy individuals and businesspeople concerned about both thieves and competitors often engage in countersurveillance.
“It’s more common than people think,” he said.
But to the former executives, Trump’s recent accusations felt familiar.
During his presidential bid, Trump campaign aides mentioned suspicions that their offices in Trump Tower were being bugged and that their communications were being monitored, though there was never any proof of that.
Others have claimed Trump recorded their own conversations with him.
In 2000, a reporter for Fortune wrote in a story questioning Trump’s stated net worth that the then-real estate mogul “admitted he had begun taping” a conversation in which he threatened to sue the publication, a practice confirmed by one of the former Trump executives.