Trump says Obama tapped his phones, offers no proof
Spokesman for ex-president calls claims ‘simply false’
President Donald Trump, in a Saturday morning tweetstorm, responded to the mounting questions over his ties to Russia by accusing thenPresident Barack Obama of wiretapping him at Trump Tower in New York just before the November election — an accusation an Obama spokesman rejected as “simply false.”
The unsubstantiated outburst comes after several days of stories raising questions about meetings between members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials, particularly two previously undisclosed meetings between now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
“How low has President Obama gone to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process,” Trump wrote. “This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Kevin Lewis, Obama’s spokesman, said in a statement: “A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice.
“As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen,” he said. “Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
Trump did not give any evidence backing up the explosive accusation.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies were known to have been examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and Trump associates, The New York Times reported in January.
The investigation was being led by the FBI, aided by the National Security Agency, the CIA and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit, the Times said.
Electronic surveillance under such an investigation would require a warrant approved by a FISA court judge. Presidents do not have the authority to order such wiretaps and would not even be aware of them.
If Trump were privy to information that his phone was indeed tapped, it would suggest that a FISA court had found probable cause to issue such a warrant.
If the president were involved in the process, it would be “scandalous and unheard of,” said Ron Hosko, a former assistant FBI director. Hosko called the allegations “unprecedented“and “unlikely to have occurred in the very broad way” that Trump described.
“The notion that you get a call from the president who says start intercepting calls on this phone ... is frankly ridiculous,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. There’s no magic wand in the hand of Barack Obama to order the FBI to go flip a switch and start collecting on a political opponent.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said during a Clemson town hall meeting Saturday that it would be the biggest political scandal since Watergate if it’s true that Obama either wiretapped Trump’s phones illegally or was able to obtain a warrant to monitor Trump’s campaign activity lawfully.
Either scenario is worrisome, he said.
Sessions recused himself from any Trump-Russia investigation after the Justice Department acknowledged he spoke twice with the Russian ambassador last year and failed to disclose the contacts during his Senate confirmation process.