March 5 (UPI) — FBI Director James Comey asked officials at the Justice Department to deny Trump’s wiretapping claims on Saturday. The Justice Department has yet to comment on the accusations.
Early Saturday morning, in a series of tweets, President Trump accused former president Barack Obama of tapping Trump’s phones at Trump Tower during the run up to last year’s November election. President Trump failed to offer any evidence of the alleged surveillance.
Trump tweeted: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
According to multiple reports, Comey told officials at the Justice Department that Trump’s claims are false and need to be corrected. Of particular concern is Trump’s insinuation that the FBI broke the law during its investigation of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.
Though neither Comey, the FBI nor the Justice Department have commented on the matter officially, both the Obama administration and a former intelligence official have rebuked the charges.
While discussing the accusations on NBC’s Meet the Press, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said no Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA wiretap request was granted for Trump during his tenure.
“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Clapper said.
On Sunday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on ABC’s This Week that Trump’s latest accusations were inspired by multiple news reports.
Politifact determined that claim to be false.
“Trump’s team cited multiple reports to back up this claim, but it’s clear only one is at the root of Trump’s claim: a November 2016 blog post based on anonymous sources that has not been corroborated by independent U.S. journalists,” Politifact wrote.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer released a statement calling the latest reports “troubling.”
“President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016,” Spicer said. “Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted.”
