The Department of Justice is suing Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s discredited former campaign manager, for $3 million in fines for failing to register foreign financial interests for several years.
Mr. Manafort was sentenced to prison in 2019 after being convicted of bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal lobbying, among other crimes. Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russian agents and interests resulted in the charges.
Meanwhile, after months of inactivity, Mr. Trump has finally posted on his Truth Social app. Despite the wishes of a number of right-wing Republicans, Mr. Trump has declared that he will not return to Twitter, even if Elon Musk reinstates his account. In fact, he has stated that he does not consider social media networks to be competitors.
In a weird statement, Trump seeks the VA Secretary’s five-year-old messages, reiterating a phony surveillance allegation.
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Former President Donald Trump issued an odd statement accusing VA Secretary Denis McDonough of attempting to sway the 2016 election while serving as Obama’s chief of staff. Mr. Trump also repeated the unproven assertion that Mr. Obama’s team “spied” on his presidential campaign.
Trump Issues a Rambling Diatribe on The Obama Administration
Donald Trump has revived the nebulous conspiracy he referred to as “Obamagate” in one of his signature messages sent out via his Save America mailing list – a baseless claim that his predecessor’s team plotted to “overturn the 2016 Presidential Election” by spying on him, his transition team, and his White House. Trump’s claim of White House wiretapping is called “simply false” by an Obama spokesman.
President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of arranging a “Nixon/Watergate” scheme to tap the phones at his Trump Tower offices in the run-up to last fall’s election, citing no evidence and receiving a blank denial from Obama’s staff.
In a series of four early morning tweets, Trump claimed Obama had been “wiretapping” his New York offices and indicated he had tampered with the “very sacred election process.” Trump claimed that Obama’s actions amounted to McCarthyism.
“You’re a bad (or ill) guy!” The 45th president tweeted about the 44th, asserting that “nothing was found” as a result of the surveillance measures.
Trump news –live: Ex-president revives false Obama spying claims, amid new book revelations https://t.co/4KxUm0ZxxR
— NEWSORB360 By AdiHri Dreamland Foundation (@adihridreamland) April 30, 2022
Senior US officials familiar with a wide-ranging federal investigation into Russian election meddling, which began during last year’s campaign, claimed on Saturday that Trump was not wiretapped.
In a statement, Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said: “No White House official ever interfered with an impartial investigation headed by the Department of Justice, according to a core norm of the Obama administration. As a result of this procedure, neither President Obama nor any White House official has ever ordered the surveillance of a single American citizen. Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue.” Officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
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White House Counsel Donald McGahn and his office are probing about possible surveillance of then-candidate Trump, according to senior administration sources, while being mindful of legal and national security concerns. “They’ll deal with it properly,” one official stated.
It was unclear whether there had been wiretaps of anyone in Trump’s entourage who may be a target of the Russia investigation. On Friday, Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Delaware, told MSNBC that he believes “transcripts” exist that would demonstrate whether Russian officials participated in Trump’s campaign.
Wiretaps in a foreign intelligence investigation cannot be directed at a U.S. facility unless there is probable cause – as determined by a federal judge – that the phone lines or Internet addresses there are being used by foreign intelligence agents or by someone spying for or acting on behalf of a foreign government.
Obama’s long-time national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, tweeted at Trump: “No President has the authority to order a wiretap. Those limits were enacted to protect civilians from individuals like you.”
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Neither Trump nor his advisers provided any evidence to back up their claims about Obama. A story on the extreme website Breitbart and statements from talk radio host Mark Levin indicating that the Obama administration employed “police state” measures to surveil the Trump campaign may have provoked the president.
