CNN Confirms Judge Napolitano Was Right - UK Was Spying On Trump!

Donald Trump set the media into a frenzy on March 4 when he Tweeted in the morning that Obama had "wiretapped him."  The Tweets read as follows:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

This all hit the scene on March 3 thanks to Mark Levin and Breitbart which does an in depth piece citing multiple media outlets:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/03/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump/

On January 20, the NYT headline on their print addition read "Wiretapped Data Used In Inquiry of Trump Aides." 

The January 20th New York Times story reports that "American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort..."

The report goes on to say that "intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House."

http://www.hannity.com/articles/election-493995/new-york-times-confirmed-wiretaps-used-15618638/

The media kept asking Trump for proof.  Besides referring to the media's own reporting, Trump pointed to comments made by Judge Napolitano who said that the Obama Administration used the British intelligence agency GCHQ:

On "Fox & Friends" this morning, Judge Andrew Napolitano said that even if the Obama administration did spy on Trump, there may never be a way to prove it.

He explained that the statutes allow the president to order the surveillance of any person in the U.S., without suspicion, probable cause or a warrant, but that would leave "fingerprints."

In this case, the alleged surveillance was reportedly ordered in a way that left no record, he said.
"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command," Napolitano said. "He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice."

Instead, Napolitano said, Obama used GCHQ, a British intelligence and security organization that has 24-7 access to the NSA database.

"There's no American fingerprints on this," Napolitano said. "What happened to the guy who ordered this? Resigned three days after Donald Trump was inaugurated."

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/03/14/judge-napolitano-why-there-may-never-be-proof-even-if-obama-spied-trump

The British were not pleased with this at all.  The media went into doomsday mode and ginned up the outrage mafia by saying that Trump had ruined relations with the UK.  The GCHQ defended themselves:

The comments prompted a furious response from GCHQ, which in a break from normal practice issued a public statement: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

Teresa May condemned the allegations:

"We've made clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We've received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated," May's spokesman said.

The British said there is no way they would ever do this:

May's spokesman argued this pact precluded the kind of spying alleged by Napolitano, saying: "I would add as a matter of fact that under the 'Five Eyes' intelligence agreement, we cannot use each other's capabilities to circumvent the law. It's a situation that simply wouldn't arise."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/politics/gchq-trump-wiretap-denial/

While there were reports of apologies from Sean Spicer and General McMaster, Sean Spicer said there was no apology.  Trump, for his part, a press conference with Angela Merkel, shrugged it off and said he did nothing wrong by citing Judge Napalitano:

"We said nothing," Trump said. "All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for [the claim].”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/17/trump-stands-by-wiretap-claim-jokes-has-something-in-common-with-merkel.html

Judge Napolitano promptly was temporarily suspended from Fox News who tried to distance themselves from the report with Shep Smith declaring, "Fox News Knows Of No Evidence Of Any Kind That The Now President Of The United States Was Surveilled At Any Time In Any Way, Full Stop."

https://mediamatters.org/video/2017/03/17/shep-smith-fox-news-cannot-confirm-judge-napolitano-s-commentary/215744

Judge Napolitano was back on Fox on March 29, however, after a 9 day suspension, and he stood by what he said:

“Yes, I do” stand by the initial claim, Napolitano stated. “And the sources stand by it.

“The American public needs to know more about this rather than less because a lot of the government’s surveillance authorities will expire in the fall, and there will be a great debate about how much authority we want the government to have to surveil us.”

http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/29/fox-news-brings-back-judge-napolitano-who-still-stands-by-obama-wiretapping-claim-video/

This brings us to today.  CNN, who is particularly preoccupied with the Russia investigation with the hopes that collusion will be spotted, reported that:

Washington (CNN) British and other European intelligence agencies intercepted communications between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials and other Russian individuals during the campaign and passed on those communications to their US counterparts, US congressional and law enforcement and US and European intelligence sources tell CNN.

The communications were captured during routine surveillance of Russian officials and other Russians known to western intelligence. British and European intelligence agencies, including GCHQ, the British intelligence agency responsible for communications surveillance, were not proactively targeting members of the Trump team but rather picked up these communications during what's known as "incidental collection," these sources tell CNN.

The European intelligence agencies detected multiple communications over several months between the Trump associates and Russian individuals -- and passed on that intelligence to the US. The US and Britain are part of the so-called "Five Eyes" agreement (along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which calls for open sharing among member nations of a broad range of intelligence.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/trump-russia-british-intelligence/index.html

CNN does proceed to note Napolitano's allegations and Trump's repeating of them:

GCHQ's surveillance became politically sensitive when Trump -- citing an uncorroborated Fox News report -- claimed that Britain had tapped his phones in Trump Tower at former President Barack Obama's behest.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeated Trump's claim and cited Fox News' reporting about GCHQ's surveillance to reporters in the briefing room. "Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement, quote, 'Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command (to spy on Trump). He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA ... he used GCHQ,'" Spicer told journalists.

Those comments angered British officials. After Spicer's remarks, White House officials told CNN British ambassador to the US Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall Grant, national security adviser to Prime Minister Theresa May, "expressed their concerns to Spicer and Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster" in two separate conversations.

The GCHQ also issued a statement saying: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wire tapping' against the then President-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/trump-russia-british-intelligence/index.html

While CNN notes it, there is no glaring headline that Napolitano, Trump, and Spicer were vindicated.  Rather I believe they will say the following thing:

Trump claimed HE was wiretapped by Obama at Trump Tower.

Trump himself may or may not have been wiretapped.  Nothing would surprise me at this point.  If Trump talked to people overseas, his calls would be swept up in surveillance.  We know there was certainly a warrant to look at a server at Trump Tower.  His people that worked for him were surveilled.  When he used the term "wiretap," he did so by putting it in quotes.  Most people understand "wiretap" to mean surveillance; the media is merely playing semantics.  However, the press is using the terms "routine surveillance" and "incidental collection" to downplay this.  The bottom line is, though, that his people and possibly Trump were surveilled, both here AND by the British GCHQ, and Obama had to have known.  That is what Judge Napolitano was trying to say.  As CNN glosses over the point, they end the article with the following:

Last month, Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, said that "based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016."

The conclusion isn't vindication, it's doubling down on the narrative.  Sad!

Zerohedge also picked up on this story and added:

Of course, we're quite certain that, as CNN notes, the intercepted communications were merely "incidental" and in no way requested by the Obama administration, but rather, were conveniently volunteered, unsolicited, by British intelligence.  Moreover, we're sure that British intelligence also had very innocent reasons for "accidentally" happening upon the communication of Trump's advisors.  That said, we do wonder whether they also happened upon any communications from the Hillary campaign...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-13/cnn-confirms-foxs-napolitano-british-intelligence-passed-trump-surveillance-us-spy-a

In fact, we now know that the British actually alerted the U.S. government of this.  The British began investigation before the U.S.  Not only were the British involved, so was Poland, Germany, Estonia, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.  This was a worldwide effort.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia?CMP=share_btn_tw

This leads one to wonder why the British began looking in to this in the first place.  Obama was obviously aware of this occurring with it being an FBI investigation, his NSA Susan Rice unmasking names, and the British and allies funneling in info.   Were names masked or was Judge Napolitano correct in saying that they were able to get around the rules about masking people picked up during incidental surveillance because they were getting it from the British government?  The British government's faux outrage now looks ridiculous.  They were lying the whole time.  The British and other governments have tried to play quiet, meanwhile, Trump is obliviously working with people who spied on his campaign.  Fantastic!