Today’s big event is the testimony before Congress of FBI director James Comey and NSA chief Mike Rogers. Everyone seems very excited about this except me. Let’s listen in:
“The F.B.I., as part of our counterintelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” [Comey] continued, adding that the investigation included looking at whether associates of Mr. Trump were in contact with Russian officials, and colluded with them.
….Mr. Comey told the House intelligence committee, “We have no information to support” President Trump’s assertion on Twitter that President Barack Obama tapped Trump Tower.
….The N.S.A. chief, Admiral Rogers, weighed in as well, saying that he had no knowledge of anyone asking the British or any other ally to wiretap Mr. Trump. That refuted another claim made by the White House….He then explicitly denied having any indication that Mr. Trump was wiretapped by British intelligence at the request of Mr. Obama.
So the FBI is investigating possible ties between Russia and some of Trump’s campaign aides, but Obama didn’t order any kind of wiretap or surveillance of Trump Tower. We already knew this, right?
Now, none of this means there was any Trump-Russia collusion, nor that there was no surveillance of Trump. The first is still under review, and the second could have been ordered as part of a criminal investigation that Obama had nothing to do with. But it does mean, essentially, that Trump’s March 4 tweets were just made-up rubbish based on a Breitbart story that someone stuffed into his pile of reading material. Of course, we already knew that too, didn’t we?