‘Full Stop’
During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel President Donald Trump was asked about his administration’s claim that British Intelligence helped President Barack Obama “wiretap” him.
“Are there other suspects or do you think it was a mistake to blame British intelligence for this?” a German reporter asked the President.Â
Defiant and defensive, Trump responded, “All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it. That was a statement made by a very talented lawyer on Fox. And so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox, OK?”
That so-called “very talented legal mind” is far right wing pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano, who is, stunningly, both the Senior Judicial Analyst for Fox News, and a columnist at WND. Formerly known as WorldNetDaily, WND is a fringe, far right wing extremist website that, for example, has spent years promoting anti-Obama birtherism.Â
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith minutes later went on-air to disavow Judge Napolitano’s bizarre conspiracy theory, that British Intelligence, also known as GCHQ, for Government Communications Headquarters, spied on Donald Trump on behalf of President Obama.
“Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” Smith told viewers Friday afternoon. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way. Full stop.”
Full stop.
Napolitano earlier this week had claimed that “three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command — he didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ.”
“What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database. So by simply having two people go to them saying President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving President-elect Trump, he is able to get it. And there is no American fingerprints on this.”
British Intelligence, GCHQ, in a rare move, fully denied the allegation.
“Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” a GCHQ spokesperson said. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”