Do you think President Obama could have ordered (covertly or overtly) wire-tapping of then President-Elect Trump?

It is very apparent the responses are based on ignorance and bigotry. Military personnel are suppose to be above that. However, from these responses it just shows myself I am still surrounded by a bunch of uniformed Neanderthals. I'm sure they think Trump is the best thing since sliced bread. The only wire tapping that is going on is in your empty head.

Could he have? Probably, though unlawful without justification and someone down the chain would demand top cover. The real point this question misses is that he never had to. Once campaign staff were communicating with Russians, they were fair game for NSA/FBI surveillance. Was Obama aware of the wiretap? Probably, as a result of him being briefed in his PDB on matters that he should be aware of. If you communicate with Russians, you should expect your phone to be monitored both by the Russian state security, and our own. It matters not whether the Russian is within the US when you communicate with them. If you want to be accurate you would say - under Obama, the FBI and NSA were monitoring various individuals in Trump's campaign as a result of communication with Russians. So if you want to use the notion that as president, all activities of the executive branch are done on his authority, then you could say he "had" Trump's campaign/tower tapped. That's the logic used against Hillary for Benghazi, though she actually had no involvement in the security decisions for the post. It's sort of like blaming the 4-star for something a colonel down in his command screwed up on.

If what you're really asking is whether Obama ordered the surveillance of Trump's campaign as some sort of political move, no. Don't be an idiot. Think about it. Why would he risk the scandal? He didn't need to order surveillance when Trump's people had already qualified for surveillance through their own activities. If the idea is that Obama tapped their phones to gain some sort of advantage for Hillary's campaign by funneling confidential campaign info, you're insulting a lot of intelligence professionals who oversee these programs with integrity. And that would also leave a glaring question: why did she lose?

Of course he "could've", unofficially of course. Anyone supporting him & against Trump would've been happy to have been asked & follow through

YES. I think he is guilty along with his staff and his "other" people he had working for him.

This question is beyond retarded ! There is no doubt , it is proven he did ! The CIA ,Homeland security and the Secret Service ALL CAN DO IT ! And if you do not know that you probably are illiterate !

All: Keep in mind we are talking about MODERN WIRETAPPING, ok? This is not a situation where someone in a black outfit goes to the basement of Trump Tower and hook up a couple of alligator clips to a couple of phone line terminals and has an old Sony cassette tape player, recording the conversations.

In this digital age... I believe ALL of our electronic conversations are being recorded and have been for a long, long time. Not stored here... probably in the UK. All you have to do is get in there to the 'storage location' go through the indexes and pull up anything you can get your hands on.

For sure he did just as you said! He used his Speech Communication Skills to do ill! To because these issues Trump has had and still has a Giant of a Job to get rid of so much anti-job regulations etc. so we can prosper as a Country not just one part!

The "wiretap" was already in place, all he had to do was ask that it be specifically monitored.

They all thought HRC was a shoe in who would cover up all their wrong doing once in office. Now it is coming out piece by piece just how corrupt that administration was.