The Atlantic

Why Trump Is Accusing Obama of Wiretapping

The president’s attacks on his predecessor may be intended to discredit the results of any inquiry into his 2016 campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.
Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Why, last Saturday, did President Trump accuse former President Obama of wiretapping him? In its story tracing the accusation from Mark Levin’s radio show to Breitbart’s front page to Trump’s Twitter Feed, The New York Times offered a theory: Trump wanted to distract the press from bad news.

“To his adversaries,” wrote Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, “Mr. Trump’s bomb-throwing seems like a calculated strategy to distract from another story he wants to avoid,” the story of “Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself last

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