You're conflating issues. There is no evidence of

You're conflating issues. There is no evidence of the existence of an entity 'Obama and his guys', and most specifically no evidence that Obama did what Trump accused him of.

Trump is too dumb to know that as president he can call the FBI and find out what he wants to know. But he really doesn't want to know if members of his campaign staff were caught up in the monitoring of foreign persons/entities, particularly Russians.

Here's an exposition on the matter from an organization that is no fan of illegal 'surveillance', which is what Trump has alleged.

Quote:

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https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/trumps...ctually-do

So, how does this surveillance statute mesh with recent news reports and President Trump’s tweets?

The Guardian reported that, last summer, the FBI sought an order from the FISA Court for permission to monitor four members of the Trump campaign team suspected of “irregular contacts” with Russian officials.

Reports suggest that the initial application was denied — a detail President Trump appears to have confirmed in his tweets. But, according to other news reports, a judge on the FISA Court eventually granted a narrower surveillance application in October 2016.

While these accounts all indicate that the FBI relied on FISA to conduct its spying, we don’t know exactly whom the FBI sought to target or on what grounds. One story suggests that the government ultimately obtained permission to target individuals or entities in Russia who were believed to be communicating with then-candidate Trump and at least three other members of the Trump campaign.

Because the identities of the “targets” named in the wiretap order are still unknown, it’s unclear whom, exactly, the FISA Court found to be a foreign agent when it authorized the surveillance.

Regardless of who the target was, however, it is critical to note that this FISA surveillance would have been individually approved by a court and could not simply have been conducted on President Obama’s order — a point made clearly in a statement released over the weekend by a spokesperson for the former president. Indeed, that was the very type of abuse that FISA was enacted to prevent.

There is no doubt we need more information to shed light on what did and did not happen. But one thing is clear. Anyone genuinely concerned about the unconstitutional surveillance of Americans should turn their attention to reforming one especially problematic section of FISA: Section 702, which the government relies on to surveil essentially all Americans’ international communications.

Unlike “traditional” FISA, which at least requires the government to obtain an individualized court order to conduct surveillance, Section 702 authorizes the warrantless surveillance of vast quantities of international communications, with virtually no judicial oversight.

Assisted by companies like Facebook, Google, AT&T, and Verizon, the government uses this law to monitor Americans’ communications with foreigners abroad.

In doing so, the government sweeps up billions of international emails, web-browsing activities, and phone calls — which NSA, CIA, and FBI analysts can then sift through looking for information about Americans.

While there have been no public indications of this to date, it’s possible that Section 702 surveillance also captured communications between the Trump campaign team and the same Russian entities abroad.

Section 702 is set to expire at the end of the year, unless Congress renews it. Instead, Congress must reform this law, which harms the privacy rights both of people abroad and virtually all Americans.

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