The 5-Minute Fix: Trump vindicated?

The Washington Post to you
Thursday, March 23, 2017

By Amber Phillips
President Trump and his allies have maintained that they will be proven right in the end: President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump's phones during the 2016 campaign.
For Trump, that day came Wednesday. Kind of.
A top Republican lawmaker, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.), revealed he has evidence that “it's possible” that conversations related to Trump — or even by Trump — were picked up incidentally by the intelligence community. When asked whether he felt vindicated by this news, Trump told reporters:
Photos by Bonnie Jo Mount

This is a significant development, but it doesn't vindicate the president.
In fact, Nunes is making the OPPOSITE case. Trump, you'll recall, claimed Obama specifically authorized the spying on him.

“That never happened,” Nunes, a Trump ally, told reporters Wednesday. If there was any spying, it didn't appear to have anything to do with the president.
So what DID happen?

Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. (Shawn Thew/EPA)
I have to give you an unsatisfying answer, but I'm going to: We don't fully know. Here's what we can piece together:
1) Nunes says he has evidence that conversations between the president and his inner circle were probably wrapped up in unrelated surveillance. That means Trump and/or his team may have talked to people under surveillance sometime during or shortly after the election.
2) Nunes asserts that none of the conversations he has seen have anything to do with Russia. The FBI and Congress are investigating Russian meddling in the U.S. election and whether Trump's team had any involvement in it.
3) Nunes did not say how he found this out, only that someone stepped forward — legally — with the evidence. And he shared it because he thought the president should know.
How to talk like a spy

(Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Apparently we're all amateur intelligence agents as we try to tease out what really happened. Here's your cheat sheet for the vocab:
Incidental collection: When your name gets caught up in surveillance that's not about you. It's not unusual for the communications of U.S. individuals to be incidentally collected if they talk to a foreigner who is under surveillance. (Say you're buddies with Russian President Vladimir Putin and you're texting about March Madness or something, I dunno. In the National Security Agency's report, you'd be titled “U.S. person one.")
Which brings me to …
Unmasked: When the identity of a U.S. citizen caught up in surveillance is revealed, either publicly or among intelligence agencies. NSA chief Mike Rogers testified to Congress on Monday that a U.S. citizen's identity is unmasked only if that person is directly related to the context of the intelligence. Only about 20 people in the whole security apparatus know the person's true identity.
Which brings me to …
Leaks: When something gets made public that an institution didn't want to be public. In this case, it's possible that the fact that former national security adviser Michael Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump's inauguration — a revelation that caused the president to fire him because he wasn't forthright about those conversations — was leaked and Flynn's identity unmasked.
At least they didn't find his college Facebook photos …

Judge Neil Gorsuch at his confirmation hearing. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
While Judge Neil Gorsuch was interviewing Wednesday to sit on the Supreme Court, the unanimously ruled against him . Yup, awkward …
In 2008, Gorsuch ruled that an autistic child and his parents were not entitled to reimbursement after the child failed to make academic progress in public school. The school, the judge ruled, met the minimum standards of education.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court universally agreed that Gorsuch interpreted the law too narrowly: A student offered such a minimal level of education “can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.
“I was bound by circuit precedent,” Gorsuch told the Senate Judiciary Committee when asked, saying that ruling against the autistic child and his parents was “heartbreaking.”
Obamacare's big day

Nurse Katie Baker examines patient Mildred Arce at the Esperanza Health Center in Philadelphia. (Dominick Reuter/AFP)
On Thursday, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on its proposal to replace Obamacare.
Republicans all agree Obamacare needs to go. But they are VERY divided on whether this legislation is the right vehicle to undo the law.
Moderates are worried that it goes too far in unwinding health-care coverage for millions of Americans. Conservatives are concerned that it doesn't unwind that coverage quickly enough.  I count enough opposition to kill the bill . Somewhere in the middle are House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Trump, who desperately want this bill to pass.
The magic number is 23, meaning if 23 Republicans and ALL House Democrats vote against the bill on Thursday, it's dead.
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