White House resists pressure, stands by wiretap claim

WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday stood by President Donald Trump’s unproven accusations his predecessor wiretapped his New York skyscraper, despite growing bipartisan agreement there’s no evidence to back up the claim and mounting pressure to retract the statement.

Angrily defending the president’s statement, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Trump “stands by” the four tweets that sparked a firestorm that has threatened Trump’s credibility with lawmakers. Spicer denounced reporters for taking the president’s words too literally and suggested lawmakers were basing their assessments on incomplete information.

Spicer’s comments were a rebuttal to the top two members of the Senate intelligence committee, who released a statement earlier Thursday declaring there is no indication Trump Tower was “the subject of surveillance” by the U.S. government before or after the 2016 election. Spicer suggested the statement from Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mark Warner, D-Va., was made without a full review of the evidence or, incorrectly, a briefing from the Justice Department.

“They are not findings,” he said.

The standoff between the White House and lawmakers came four days before FBI Director James Comey is slated to testify before Congress, when he inevitably will be asked whether the president’s accusations are accurate. The White House’s refusal to back down raised the stakes for Comey’s appearance before the intelligence committee on Monday.

Trump tweeted earlier this month that President Barack Obama “was tapping my phones in October” and compared the incident to “Nixon/Watergate” and “McCarthyism.”