BuzzFeed: Why Is Donald Trump So Obsessed With Surveillance? (Spoiler: He does it himself.)

[Denzil_DC]

President Donald Trump has rattled the political and national security establishment by doubling down on his accusation that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. So far, no evidence has emerged to support his claim.

But telephone eavesdropping and video surveillance have indeed long taken place at Trump properties — it’s just that they were conducted by Trump’s own team.

At his private club at Mar-a Lago, as BuzzFeed News revealed last June, Trump listened in on employee phone calls using a special switchboard that was installed in his bedroom and was connected to every phone line in the estate. The Trump Organization employs a “director of surveillance,” Matt Calamari, son of Trump’s longtime bodyguard. Inside Trump’s house near Washington, DC, where guests would sometimes stay, an extensive video surveillance system was monitored by Trump security personnel in New York. A surveillance company said that in public areas of the Trump National Doral resort, it installed video cameras to blend in with the décor by looking like smoke detectors.

None of the surveillance appears to be illegal, though some employees found it disconcerting. At Mar-a-Lago, one former employee told BuzzFeed News of an incident when a staff member was on the phone with a club member. During the phone call, Trump called the staff member on another line to weigh in on the very issue that was being discussed. “There is no other way you could know what that conversation was about unless you were eavesdropping,” this source said. At the Trump National Golf Club, where Trump has a home about a 45-minute drive from the White House, two former employees said the surveillance cameras were monitored so intently that workers would occasionally get called by security in New York if they were in an unexpected place.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/why-is-donald-trump-so-obsessed-with-surveillance?utm_term=.iflW2M06WO#.jtBDoxB7Dk

[Wellstone ruled]

1. It is all about Donald and nothing else.

[meow2u3]

2. He's probably dishing it out

This is Tramp, the master of psychological projection: he turns around and accuses others of doing to him whichever nefarious deed he's dishing out, or at least is plotting.

[global1]

3. Is Trump Monitoring The Foreign Guests That Are Staying At....

his DC hotel?

[woodsprite]

4. Great question! You bet your sweet bottom dollar, he is!

And now, so is Russia.