In a startling segment on the Fox News program The First 100 Days, Judge Andrew Napolitano told viewers that there will be no paper trail linking President Obama to any surveillance of telephone calls in Trump Tower during the presidential transition period.  (President Obama called it "wiretapping" even though no wires were involved.)  The reason is that British intelligence had access to NSA surveillance data – which captures every phone call in the United States – and were able to provide such intelligence to President Obama without a FISA court warrant or any other paper trail that would expose an American intelligence agency that used the same NSA data.  Click here to see the segment in which he explained the scheme, or watch it below:

Note that just as the New York Times does when offering leaks from intelligence sources, no names are attached to the leaks.  They are an anonymous source for Fox News and Judge Napolitano.

Nevertheless, such a scheme makes great sense.  It is widely rumored that such arrangements are common among intelligence services to work around limitations their own governments impose on them.

Monica Showalter comments:

This would explain the slightly frosty relations between Trump and [British P.M.] May.  One wonders what the Brits thought they would get out of this.  Talk about not acting in one's national interest!  So they pleased Obama, who treated them like dirt.

If the judge is correct, there will no paper trail at all, so Trump's charges will be dismissed as a fantasy.  It is a nice con game for deep staters.

It is still not provable, and absent a defector from the British or American intelligence services, the public will never know.