Do today’s latest criminal charges against Donald Trump mean that the Feds had a wiretap on him?
Donald Trump once famously claimed that the DOJ or FBI had tried to tap his phones at his home. Actually he tweeted that they’d tried to “tapp” his phones, but that’s another story. The kicker is that Trump has gone on to get criminally indicted for dozens of felonies, in the kind of crime spree that would very much legally support a wiretap – and in light of today’s latest charges against Trump, one legal expert is floating the possibility that this did indeed happen.
Today’s superseding indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents probe reveals that the Feds knew exactly what Donald Trump and his employee Carlos De Oliveira said to each other during a Mar-a-Lago phone call. The thing is, De Oliveira is not cooperating. So it’s not as if he’s the one who provided the details of this phone conversation to the Feds.
To that end, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman pointed out during tonight’s Lawrence O’Donnell show that it’s possible one or both of their phones were indeed tapped. This would have been done under a warrant signed by a judge, so it would be totally legal, and frankly commonplace in an Espionage Act criminal investigation. There are other potential explanations. But a wiretap is certainly plausible, and maybe even the most plausible explanation. For that matter, it was separately reported this week that the Feds obtained eight different search warrants as part of this probe. Such warrants can include surveillance.
We may have to wait until trial to get all the details, but this kind of stuff will all come out eventually. In the meantime, just wait until Trump’s lawyers explain to him that he may have been under legal surveillance after all.
