Of course they wiretapped Trump and his aides before the election

Having cut my teeth as a journalist in the Watergate epoch, the official denials of Trump's charge that Obama ordered wiretaps evoked fond memories.

Because when you get past the rhetoric and faux outrage, the bottom line is this: no Obama didn't order the wiretaps. There is no denial that there were wiretaps, but Obama was not personally involved. At least not that anyone can prove, now that Nixon's secret taping setup in the Oval Office has been deprecated.

But if Obama really wasn't involved, that would have been because he didn't need to be involved. Should Obama have raised the issue, the response would have been, "That's already been taken care of, sir."

Two things tell us that Trump's people were wiretapped.

• Thing one: Everyone is being wiretapped by the NSA. 
• Thing two: There was an FBI investigation of Trump and his aides.

We know from l'ami du peuple, citoyen Edward Snowden, that unless you're using two Dixie cups and a string, you're on a party line with the NSA. And as we used to say four decades ago, we even have the denials to prove it:

Now for thing two: The New York Times reported last fall that for months the FBI had been investigating Trump's Russia connection:

WASHINGTON — For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

That story ran October 31, two days before the election. It was obviously a cover-your-ass leak after Director James Comey torpedoed Hillary's campaign a week earlier by officially announcing a new investigation into her emails -- an announcement that violated FBI and Justice Department rules, we might add.

And, of course, we have the denials to prove it.

Now, in the fullness of time it will be conclusively shown that, yes, Trump Tower was wiretapped but no, Obama did not personally order this specific wiretap, Yet despite the fullness of time, the media will never even suspect what is going on.