Senator Rand Paul

(R-KY) was in the lion’s den trying to explain why Susan Rice’s actions pose serious concerns. He tried pointing out that for years, libertarians and progressives both voiced civil liberties concerns over unconstitutional, widespread surveillance tactics employed by the federal government, but the fine folks at MSNBC just laughed and scoffed at him.

As you know, the media’s narrative in responding to the Susan Rice story is that it’s a non-story, and that anyone who even raises questions about Susan Rice is a conspiracy theorist, well deserving of the harshest ridicule.

(At the same time, anyone who questions the media’s completely unsubstantiated story about collusion between Russia and Trump is a conspiracy theorist…go figure.)

On MSNBC, Senator Rand Paul stated his case quite clearly how important it was that there be an investigation into Susan Rice’s actions, and to find out how much of what she did and requested was at President Obama’s behest.

“If you want to look at an American’s phone call or listen to it, you should have to have a warrant, the old fashioned way, in a real court, where both sides get represented,” he explained. “But a secret warrant by a secret court with a lower standard level because we’re afraid of terrorism is one thing for foreigners, but both myself and a progressive Ron Wyden have been warning about these backdoor searches for years, and that they could be politicized.”

He continued: “The facts will come out with Susan Rice, but I think she ought to be under subpoena. She should be asked, ‘Did you talk to the President about it? Did President Obama know about this?’”

“So this is actually eerily similar to what Trump accused them of, which is eavesdropping on conversations for political purposes,” he said.

At that point, commentator Bill Press weighed in, saying it was “totally different.”

Later, Paul put Trump’s tweet in context: “We don’t have wires in our phones anymore — no one actually taps wires,” he told the MSNBC panel. “But for the most part we use the term ‘wiretapping’ to mean eavesdropping… Now we know that someone in the Obama administration was eavesdropping, and specifically searching the databank looking for Trump people. That is a big deal.”

Well, it would be a big deal to these media pundits, if Dick Cheney had done this to the incoming Obama administration. (Maybe they did.) But since Trump is the target now, it’s “totally different.”

Source: Rand Paul: Obama Administration Had ‘Sour Grapes on the Way Out the Door,’ Used ‘Intelligence Apparatus to Attack Trump | Opinion – Conservative