Here’s the thing: I agree with @BradMossEsq on this. I have a very hard time deciphering exactly what law Obama broke here. As bad as spying on a political campaign sounds, Congress ceded a lot of that power to the executive branch over the last 100 years.
We know that the IC (NSA, FBI, CIA, etc.) have propped up surveillance operations on virtually every facet of American society. How do they continue to get a pass? They cite national security. It might sound like a cop out, but that’s pretty much how this country has operated.
It’s a slippery slope here: prosecuting Obama for spying on the Trump campaign, while wrong if done for political or malicious reasons, could set a precedent that could make future presidents susceptible to prosecution for acting based on nat sec reasons.
Given the intelligence that was available at the time, Obama could’ve legitimately acted on it in good faith, seeking to get to the bottom of what the IC was claiming: that the Russian govt interfered in the 2016 election.
A more cynical reading of it is that Obama spied on the Trump campaign for political reasons and sought to derail Trump’s presidency, an argument Trump and his proponents have made.
And politics is the reason we’ll probably never truly know how and why this all happened.
And politics is the reason we’ll probably never truly know how and why this all happened.
