US intelligence ‘spy on everybody,’ could well have wiretapped Trump – Ron Paul talks FISA memo
Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the ‘Russiagate’ probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT.
A top-secret intelligence memo, believed to reveal political bias at the highest levels of the FBI and the DOJ towards President Trump, may well be as significant as the Republicans say, Ron Paul said. But, he added, “there’s still to many unknowns, especially, from my view point.”
“Trump's connection to the Russians, I think, has been way overblown, and I’d like to just get to the bottom of this new information that’s coming out, maybe this will reveal things and help us out,” he said.
“Right now it’s just a political fight,” the former US Congressman said. “I think they’re dealing with things a lot less important than the issue they ought to be talking about… Right now, I don’t think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they’re seeking to get political advantage.”
Trump’s claims that he was wiretapped by US intelligence agencies on the orders of the Obama administration may well turn out to be true, Paul said. “I would be surprised if they haven’t spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents.”
He criticized Trump, however, for doing nothing to prevent the Senate from voting in the expansion of warrantless surveillance of US citizens under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) earlier this week. “The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the president couldn’t be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe they did, and he believes that.”
“I’ve always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the worst deal by arguing, who’s guilty of some crime,” the politician explained.
The fact that Democrats on the relevant committees have all voted against releasing the memo “might mean that Trump is probably right; there's probably a lot of stuff there that would exonerate him from any accusation they’ve been making,” he said.
READ MORE: Fake news media’s ‘Russia hoax’ is dead, says Trump
Paul also blasted the infamous ‘Russian Dossier’ compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it “has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia. From the people I know… The story has been all made up, essentially.”
“I’m no fan of Trump. I’m not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way overboard. I think the Democrats can’t stand the fact that they’ve lost the election, and they can’t stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like,” Paul said.
