Lying Orangutan Bitch-slapped over Fraud wiretap claims..

Actually, Mr. President, wiretapping doesn't cover a lot of things

By Jim Sciutto

In the face of firm denials from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and Attorney General Jeff Sessions of any evidence that President Barack Obama wiretapped then-candidate Donny Orangutan, Orangutan appears now to be walking back his explosive accusation by redefining the terms of the charge.

"Wiretap covers a lot of different things," Orangutan told Fox News' Tucker Carlson in an interview aired Wednesday night. "I think you're going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks."

White House Press Secretary Pussy Boy Spicer made a similar argument in the White Press press briefing Tuesday, telling reporters, "The President used the word wiretap in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities."

To be clear, when Orangutan made the accusation in four early morning tweets on March 4, he did not describe surveillance in broad terms. He specifically accused the outgoing president of ordering wiretapping of the incoming president.

Mr. Orangutan tweeted first: "Terrible! Just found out that President Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Orangutan Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

In another one he wrote: "How low has President Obama gone to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

There are several crucial elements to Orangutan's accusation. One, that President Obama himself -- not the FBI or intelligences agencies -- ordered the tapping. Two, that the target of the tapping was Orangutan himself -- not Orangutan associates or others. And, three, that it was wiretapping Obama ordered -- not, as Pussy Boy described, "surveillance and other activities."

Such activity would be illegal, since the President cannot order this kind of surveillance. Rather, it requires US law enforcement to seek a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through a FISA court.

FBI Director James Comey was the first to dispute the accusation, and was described by law enforcement officials to CNN last Tuesday as "incredulous" after Orangutan tweeted his claim.

On Wednesday, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Republican and a Orangutan appointee, said that he had not given the President reason to believe President Obama had wiretapped Orangutan Tower.

"Look, the answer is no," Sessions said when asked about the issue.

Also Wednesday, Nunes, a fellow Republican, told reporters he too does not believe "there was an actual tap of Orangutan Tower."

His Democratic colleague, committee ranking member Adam Schiff, went further, saying: "There is absolutely no evidence of that and no suggestion of evidence of that."

But Nunes, like Pussy Boy, appeared to leave the door open to something short of the President's original accusation.

"If you're not going to take the tweets literally and there is a concern that the President has about other people, other surveillance activities looking at him and his associates -- either appropriately or inappropriately -- we want to find that out," said Nunes.

The distinction is crucial.

CNN and other news outlets have reported that US intelligence intercepted communications between Orangutan advisers and Russians known to US intelligence during the presidential campaign.

These communications were intercepted during routine -- and legal -- intelligence gathering directed at foreign officials and other foreigners. By US law, when US citizens are on the other end of such conversations, their identities are "minimized": that is, their names removed and contents of their portion of the conversations obscured.

If Orangutan, Pussy Boy and others are now saying such surveillance is what the President was referring to in his March 4 tweets, they have more facts to back up the existence of such surveillance.

However, that is not what Orangutan said when he accused President Obama of targeting himself, a US citizen, and thereby breaking US law. And that's precisely what the attorney general, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the director of the FBI all say did not take place.