Court filing: No evidence found of wiretapping

Justice Department says Trump Tower claim unsupported.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has no evidence to support President Donald Trump’s statement in March that phones in Trump Tower were wiretapped on the order of his predecessor, Barack Obama, before last year’s election, according to a court filing.

The assertion came in a motion filed in a Freedom of Information request from a government transparency watchdog, American Oversight, which sought information about any surveillance involving Trump, his tower in New York City, or his presidential campaign from the FBI and the Justice Department’s national security division.

“Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets,” the Justice Department filing said.

Trump posted the claim on Twitter.

It appeared to come from Breitbart, the media outlet now run by Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist.

“Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” Trump wrote on Twitter during a weekend he spent at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla..

“Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!,” another post said.

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

The claims were tweeted two days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would recuse himself from any investigations into possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

At the time, Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”