Obama denies Trump claim he wiretapped him during campaign
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A spokesman for Barack Obama yesterday rejected claims by US President Donald Trump that the then-president had wiretapped Trump in October during the late stages of the presidential election campaign.
Trump made the accusation in a series of tweets, without citing evidence, just weeks into his administration and amid rising scrutiny of his campaign’s ties to Russia.
“Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false,” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement.
Trump hurled the accusation in the tweets sent early yesterday morning.
“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “I’d bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”
Trump said the alleged wiretapping took place in his Trump Tower office and apartment building in New York, but there was “nothing found.”
US intelligence agencies concluded last year that Russia hacked and leaked Democratic emails during the election campaign as part of an effort to tilt the vote in Trump’s favor. The Kremlin has denied the allegations. Lewis also said that “a cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.”
The statement did not dismiss the possibility that a wiretap of the Trump campaign could have been ordered by Justice Department officials.
The White House did not respond to a request to elaborate on Trump’s accusations.
A Trump spokeswoman said the Republican president is “having meetings, making phone calls and hitting balls” at his golf course in West Palm Beach.
Trump’s tweets caught his aides by surprise, with one saying it was unclear what the president was referring to.
Members of Congress said Trump’s allegations require investigation or explanation.
US Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s assertion a “spectacularly reckless allegation.
“If there is something bad or sick going on, it is the (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
willingness of the nation’s chief executive to make the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them,” Schiff said.
Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, tweeted, “Either FBI is talking to the subject of an investigation or Trump is making it up. Either way Americans deserve explanation.”
Earlier, former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes strongly denied Trump’s allegations.
“No president can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you,” Rhodes wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s administration has come under pressure from Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional investigations into contacts between some members of his campaign team and Russian officials during his campaign.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said he had no knowledge about any wiretapping but is “very worried that our president is suggesting that the former president has done something illegally. I would (also) be very worried if in fact the Obama administration was able to obtain a warrant lawfully about Trump campaign activity.”
Graham said it was his job “to get to the bottom of this. I promise I will.”