Absence of evidence
President Trump’s accusation that his predecessor had him wiretapped was typical of Trump’s record of inflammatory and unsupported claims. But it’s become a unique test of the proposition that facts still matter to the country even if they don’t particularly concern its chief executive.
The salient facts here are straightforward: Trump explicitly charged that former President Barack Obama had Trump Tower bugged. And a growing number of officials who might know whether that’s true have suggested that it isn’t.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, became the latest to do so Wednesday, telling reporters he didn’t believe the president was wiretapped. Also Wednesday, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said he had not given the president any reason to think so either. Nunes and Sessions thereby joined several other notable officials who have cast doubt on Trump’s claims — among them former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and the president’s own press secretary, Sean Spicer.
In the wee hours of March 4, Trump posted four tweets alleging that Obama had personally had the phones in his New York building tapped during last year’s campaign. But Nunes, whose committee is investigating the matter, said in a news conference, “We don’t have any evidence that that took place, and, in fact, I don’t ... think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”
The congressman’s use of “actual” speaks to the strangely post-factual nature of the Trump presidency. Nunes has repeatedly proposed that Trump’s accusation was not meant to be taken literally. Likewise, despite Trump’s obvious lack of interest in the details of punctuation, Spicer tried to downplay the allegations by arguing that multiple layers of meaning could be read into the quotation marks the president used. And in a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday night, Trump himself argued that “wiretap covers a lot of different things.”
Those administration officials who have tried to back up Trump’s claims have struggled to do so. One adviser, Kellyanne Conway, made bizarre reference to spying microwaves. Another cited reports that federal law enforcement officials asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to eavesdrop on Russians who had contact with Trump associates. Even if those reports prove accurate, the facts will remain a long way from what the president actually said.