Eli Lake, Columnist

What Trump Should Have Tweeted About Obama and Eavesdropping

The president was wrong on the facts but right that former officials are using classified info to wage political warfare.

March 6, 2017 at 9:33 PM UTC

By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

The Great Communicator.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Washington is in need of fainting couches. On Saturday, President Donald Trump tweeted that his predecessor, Barack Obama, ordered a wiretap on him before the election. Legislators and pundits are horrified. The swamp is stunned.

So let's unpack this. To be sure, what Trump tweeted is almost certainly false. Since the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a president cannot just order the FBI or the NSA to eavesdrop on a U.S. citizen. Justice Department lawyers have to ask that secret court for a warrant. By Sunday evening, news outlets were reporting that FBI director James Comey had urged the Justice Department to clarify the record and say no such wiretap was ordered. In this respect Trump got it wrong.