Ex-intelligence chief rejects wiretap claims

The former top United States intelligence official rejected President Donald Trump’s accusation that his predecessor, Barack Obama, wiretapped him even as the White House yesterday urged Congress to investigate Trump’s allegation.

The New York Times reported that FBI Director James Comey asked the Justice Department at the weekend to reject Trump’s wiretapping claim because it was false and must be corrected, but the department had not done so.

The White House asked Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, to examine whether the Obama Administration abused its investigative authority during last year’s presidential campaign, as part of an ongoing congressional probe into Russia’s influence on the election.

Trump on Sunday alleged, without offering supporting evidence, that Obama ordered a wiretap of the phones at Trump’s campaign headquarters in Trump Tower in New York.

“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate or against his campaign,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who left his post at the end of Obama’s term in office in January, said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Under US law, a federal court would have to have found probable cause that the target of the surveillance is an “agent of a foreign power” in order to approve a warrant authorising electronic surveillance of Trump Tower. Asked whether there was such a court order, Clapper said, “I can deny it.”

Democrats accused Trump of trying to distract from the rising controversy about possible ties to Russia. His Administration has come under pressure from FBI and congressional investigations into contacts between members of his campaign team and Russian officials.

Trump made the wiretapping accusation in a series of early morning tweets on Sunday.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary under Obama, said the President did not have the authority to unilaterally order a wiretap of a US citizen.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions bowed out last week of any probe into alleged Russian meddling in the election after it emerged he met last year with Russia’s ambassador while serving as a Trump campaign adviser. Sessions says he did nothing wrong by failing to disclose the meetings.

And Trump fired his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, last month after revelations that he had discussed US sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office. — Reuters

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