Corey Lewandowski, President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, said Trump thinks former President Barack Obama was “100 percent” involved in spying on his 2016 presidential campaign.
“He (Trump) absolutely thinks that this went directly to the top of the previous administration,” said Lewandowski on “Fox & Friends” Thursday. “There is no way an opportunity like this to spy on a political opponent was not vetted at the highest levels of the government, whether it was Susan Rice or the Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes or Barack Obama himself. Somebody sanctioned this. His Department of Justice filed an application to spy on guys like Carter page, Corey Lewandowski, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and everybody else at the campaign because they didn't like our politics.”
He added: “We're American citizens. We fought for what we believed in. If the criteria is, ‘We don't like your politics, we can spy on you,’ guess what, the Democrats better be very concerned.”
MEDIA TAKE ISSUE WITH AG BARR FOR SAYING 'SPYING DID OCCUR' ON TRUMP CAMPAIGN
On Capitol Hill Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr stated under oath that “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign ahead of the 2016 election.
“I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016. I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. "I think spying did occur, yes. I think spying did occur. The question was whether it was adequately predicated. And I'm not suggesting it wasn't predicated. I need to explore that.”
OBAMA SAYS TRUMP CLAIM HE ORDERED TRUMP TOWER WIRETAPPED IS FALSE
“We know it wasn’t legal because spying on American citizens on domestic soil because you don't like our politics by definition is illegal,” said Lewandowski Thursday in response to Barr’s statements the day before. “The real question that Attorney General Barr has to determine is, how high in the previous administration did this go? Did Barack Obama know about this? Was this a rogue operation by Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor? Because we know that Comey and Clapper and Brennan and that team was authorized to do it. But where did the pressure point come from? And that’s what Attorney General Barr wants to find out. Who authorized it? When did they authorize it? And who knew about it?”
In a tweet in March 2017, Trump accused his predecessor of wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Trump tweeted, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
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“You remember the mainstream media went apoplectic about this ‘Donald Trump is making these gross accusations with no foundation whatsoever.’ Well, fast forward to where we are now, two years later, we know that there was spying taking place. We know that they did it in violation of the Constitution. Even if they applied for a FISA warrant to spy on Americans, they did so because they didn't like our politics," said Lewandowski. "There was no collusion. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome. And so yes, I think the president knew about it back then and the American people are learning about it now.”
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