The latest outrageous outrage to emerge from President Trump’s keyboard and spill across Twitter is the accusation by the current president that the previous president wiretapped the trump Tower. A spokesperson for the former president immediately worded a carefully crafted denial that did not suggest that a wiretap was not placed on the Trump Tower but only that the former president did not personally order it.
The tweet storm that Trump kicked up was not a frivolous accusation. A number of press reports indicated that the Obama administration tried twice and maybe succeeded the second time to get a FISA warrant to start surveilling Trump and his associates.
Likely the request stemmed from the accusation that Trump was colluding with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, a conspiracy theory that has become the Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya meme for the Trump era.
As Hot Air suggests, the tweet accusation is not the paranoid ravings of a madman, at least to the extent that it is implausible. The Obama administration was known for skirting the law, from running guns to drug cartels to weaponizing the IRS against the Tea Party. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the Obama administration bugged the offices of a political opponent based on sketchy at best evidence.
The accusation has every potential to blow up in the faces of Obama and his supporters.
An operation to bug the offices of a political opponent has exact parallels to watergate which started as a break-in of the offices of the Democratic National Committee by operatives planting bugging devices. If Obama went too far in trying to establish some connection between the Trump Team and Russia he could, at best, be tainted with the mantle of Richard Nixon.
At worse the former president could face legal jeopardy.
Trump has scored a victory in that the media is no longer talking about the conspiracy theory that people like Jeff Sessions were plotting with the evil Russians to put Trump into office like the Manchurian Candidate. They are now talking about the wiretapping accusation, if only to roll its collective eyes. But if Team Trump produces some evidence that the operation happened, then watch out. Nemesis may well be about to strike at the hubris of Barack Obama.