PAUL: Well, I think the first thing to realize is that I think everybody has been getting the story wrong. I doubt that Trump was a target directly of any kind of eavesdropping, but I am not saying it didn’t happen. I think there’s a very good chance it does. I don’t have any special information.

But the way it works is, the FISA court, through Section 702, wiretaps foreigners and then listens to Americans. It is a backdoor search of Americans. And because they have so much data, they can tap — type Donald Trump into their vast resources of people they are tapping overseas, and they get all of his phone calls.

And so they did this to President Obama. They — 1,227 times eavesdrops on President Obama’s phone calls. Then they mask him. But here is the problem. And General Hayden said this the other day. He said even low-level employees can unmask the caller. That is probably what happened to Flynn.

They are not targeting Americans. They are targeting foreigners. But they are doing it purposefully to get to Americans.

DICKERSON: OK.

So, your point is, the president would have been caught in a net — or — excuse me — candidate Trump caught in a net, but not targeted directly.

PAUL: Or his associates.

But it is very dangerous, because they are revealing that now to the public.

(CROSSTALK)

DICKERSON: All right, thank you, Senator. We ran out of time.