Conway trips up over her wiretapping spin

TOP White House aide Kellyanne Conway said on Monday she had no evidence to back up President Donald Trump’s claim that his predecessor had wiretapped him, after suggesting her boss may have been spied upon using other methods.

The Trump administration is under pressure to provide proof to shore up the president’s unsubstantiated allegation that Barack Obama ordered the phones to be tapped at Trump Tower during the election campaign.

“The answer is I don’t have any evidence and I’m happy that the House Intelligence Committee are investigating,” Conway told ABC television.

The senior aide to the president was being pressed to explain weekend comments that seemed to suggest the Obama administration ordered wide-scale surveillance of her boss.

“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,” Conway told Bergen County Record.

“You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets – any number of ways,” including “microwaves that turn into cameras”, she told the paper. “We know this is a fact of modern life.”

Conway backed away on Monday from the comments – which were greeted with online ridicule – telling ABC’s Good Morning America she had been referring to “surveillance gene and not to the president’s allegations regarding Trump Tower.

Trump, meanwhile, appeared to take the media to task over treatment of Conway.

“It is amazing how rude much of the media is to my very hard working representatives,” he tweeted minutes after she wrapped up appearances on several morning talk shows. “Be nice”, he said, “you will do much better!”

Both Obama, through a spokesman, and his director of national intelligence James Clapper have denied ordering any wiretapping operation targeted at Trump. — AFP its skeptical