Today in a town hall meeting Senator Lindsey Graham pointed out the extreme jeopardy in which President Trump's twitter attack about alleged wiretaps puts both the government and the Trump Administration. The claim wasn't backed up by any suggestion of evidence and came just a few days after President Trump called on the nation and politicians, in particular, to put aside these "trivial fights" and get on with the business of governing the country.

Wiretap

There are only two possibilities here, either President Trump is simply making it all up in his own mind, a serious possibility considering his track record as far as truthfulness goes, or President Obama (actually it would be the FBI) really did tap Trump’s phone calls, which would be equivalent to the Watergate investigation but only if it were done illegally.

But Presidents can’t initiate wiretaps, only the FBI can authorize a wiretap on a U.S. citizen and even they must obtain a warrant from the secret FISA espionage court.

President Trump has presented zero evidence of such a wiretap which came out during a flurry of twitters this morning. Minutes after dropping this political and legal bombshell on twitter the president attacked Arnold Schwartzenager either elevating The Apprentice TV show to the level of a charge of possible treason or lowering his wiretap claim to the level of Sunday papers comic page comments.

The other possibility FISA approved

Although he cited no evidence to back up his incredible claim of wiretapping, President Trump supposedly received enough information about it to declare that “nothing was found.”

If he got that information about a FISA authorized investigation then disclosing anything at all about it in a tweet would be a serious security violation since all FISA actions are top secret.

But suppose that during President Obama’s final months the FBI did apply for and get a FISA approved wiretap.

That would mean that, at a time when any court would be very careful not to interfere with an election, the FBI was able to provide convincing evidence that there was probable cause to believe something illegal was going on between President Trump and Russia.

Not only serious but actually posing a threat to the national security.

FISA

FISA stands for the Foreign Intelligence Security Act and sets up a secret collection of judges who must hear evidence of probable cause that a national security breach is in progress and then authorize the FBI to conduct surveillance on someone in the United States.

This is considered Top Secret since disclosure of a wiretap would cause the individuals to stop using their compromised phone lines. Although President Obama (or President Trump) might direct the FBI to look into a possible threat, it is normally done completely by the FBI internally and the current president might not even know it was happening unless some important information was developed.

In any case only if credible evidence is presented to a judge and that judge issues an order, can a wiretap be initiated.