The "Obama spied on Trump!!!" thread

Since even Ross Douthat appears to have fallen victim to this particularly popular bit of "the Deep State is out to get Trump" CT, now being promoted by the Attorney General of the United States (along with Trump himself of course).

Just linking an NYT opinion piece from May 3 by a former federal prosecutor for context and explanation:

Quote:

President Trump has repeatedly said that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was “a coup.” According to the president and his supporters, individuals in the F.B.I. formed the heart of a nefarious conspiracy to take him down by engaging in rogue “spying” on the his campaign. New details from reporting on the counterintelligence inquiry in summer 2016 lays out how a government investigator posing as a research assistant met with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, to better understand any potential Trump campaign “links to Russia.” Brad Parscale, the 2020 campaign manager for the president, said it’s further proof that the “real scandal was the Obama administration using the Justice Department to spy on a political adversary’s campaign.”

Quote:

But make no mistake, in the broad context of high-profile public corruption investigations, the methods used against Mr. Trump’s associates are by no means an anomaly. What is anomalous is the effort by some Republicans to undermine legitimate counterintelligence concerns. After Mr. Barr’s testimony, Senator Hawley tweeted that “the F.B.I. spied on @realDonaldTrump and launched multiyear investigations” because “unelected progressive elites in our government have nothing but contempt for” Trump voters. The “spying” rhetoric casts a cloud of illegitimacy over the Russia probe and the F.B.I. and undermines the special counsel’s findings. This is useful misdirection: Mr. Mueller’s conclusion that the Trump “campaign anticipated receiving derogatory documents and information from official Russian sources that could assist candidate Trump’s electoral prospects” challenges Mr. Barr’s declaration that the evidence showed “no collusion.” In that light,it’s not hard to see who’s serving the truth and who’s serving the president.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/o...i-russia-.html

via International Skeptics Forum http://bit.ly/2LovnW3