What's the buzz about wiretapping

The Trump Towers wiretap story has been circulating the past few days. Quite obviously it made it's way back to the President and he is none too pleased. The concept of the wiretapping was first reported by Heat Street, but repeated by others. The fact that the Federal Government seemed to be routinely intercepting communications from members of the Trump team seems at least somewhat suspicious.

To further confuse matters, there also been reports (NT Times and others) that the government had been collecting metadata from servers from within the Trump Towers (but not necessarily monitoring other communications).

Here seems to be a good recap of what people have been hearing and reporting:

KEEPING AN EYE ON RUSSIA  
1. In June 2016, the Obama administration filed a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Trump and several advisers but the request was denied, according to Heat Street former editor, Louise Mensch.
2. In October, the Obama administration submitted a new FISA request, which focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russia, according to Heat Street.
4. In January 2017, Christopher Steele was named as ex-MI6 agent behind 'fake' Trump sex dossier. None of the allegations were verified and some were proven false. Also in January, the Obama administration expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.
5. In January 2017, American law enforcement and intelligence agencies examined intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of Trump, according to the Times.
6. The Times also reported in January that White House officials took efforts in the closing days of the Obama administration to analyze and spread information about Russian election interference, driven by a concern that the material might get buried by Trump.
7. A month later, ex- National Security Adviser Mike Flynn was forced to resign from his position following reports that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia.
8. Also in February, phone records and intercepted calls showed that members of Trump's campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, the Times reported.
9. In March, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions removed himself from all investigations involving the presidential campaign in a stunning turnaround to save his job on Thursday afternoon. It was revealed that he didn't tell Congress about his meetings with the Russian ambassador to the US. He then announced he was recusing himself from all investigations connected to the presidential election.

My gut feeling is that much of this (but not necessarily all of it) is probably true. My degree of skepticism mainly on points one and two. Heat Street isn't exactly a reliable source as it might pertain to what the Federal Government is or isn't doing with a FICA request, and other sources have been vague as to where they got their information. Whenever  you have a consistency with various reports from unnamed sources... it could either mean that they are true, or they all originate from the same fake source.

That being said, there is enough specific information to be able to verify one way or the other. If in fact there was a FICA warrant granted to either collect metadata from servers or to wiretap communications from Trump Towers, then this becomes a huge issue.

As far as the Trump tweets go. While many on the left will want to make this about Trump making allegations of wiretapping without proof, it will probably move the conversation into whether or not it's true and to what degree is there a concerted effort by the "deep state" to undermine the Presidency.

The irony is that while your Democrats and liberal press will all feint shock that such allegations are made without proof...  in all reality any allegations of Trump colluding with the Russians are equally without proof. Possibly more ironic is that much of the "reasoning" behind the claims that Trump and his team colluded with the Russians comes from so called "intercepted communications". How do you intercept communications if you are not monitoring them in the first place?