Columnist again misses the mark with rantings about Obamagate

Wayne Allyn Root has done it again. He has taken a fact (Paul Manafort had his line tapped by the FBI) and misrepresented it and conflated it into a made-up scandal (“Obamagate is the next major scandal,” Sunday Review-Journal).

Yes, the FBI tapped Mr. Manafort’s phone. Yes, the FBI falls under the executive branch. But the agency began the wiretap in 2014, with approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a year before Donald Trump became a candidate and two years before Mr. Manafort had any involvement in Mr. Trump’s campaign. While Barack Obama is a very smart man, he is not clairvoyant and there would be no way of his predicting, in 2014, that Mr. Manafort would become Mr. Trump’s campaign manager in 2016. Besides, sworn testimony showed that President Obama, unlike Mr. Trump, had minimal contact with the FBI.

So, Mr. Root, Mr. Trump’s claim that President Obama wiretapped him was “baseless” and a “flat-out lie.” Yes, there are scandals brewing, but none will be called “Obamagate.” Mr. Mueller’s investigation will determine which will earn the title of Trumpgate.