Trump accuses Obama of tapping his phones
WObama of tapping his phones during last year’s White House campaign, charges that his predecessor denied as “simply false.”
“I’d bet a good lawyer could make Trump and Obama frequently a great case out of the fact that Presitraded barbs on the campaign trail, dent Obama was tapping my phones and the Republican real estate magin October, just prior to Election!” nate was a driving force behind the Trump wrote on Twitter, without so-called “birther” movement that providing evidence of the explosive questioned whether Obama was born charge. on US soil and eligible to be president.
“How low has President Obama The two men initially adopted a gone to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is though the president has stepped up Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” accusations against Obama in recent he wrote in another tweet, referring weeks, blaming his predecessor for to the political scandal that toppled being behind damaging leaks to president Richard Nixon in 1974. journalists.
An Obama spokesman called Trump’s accusations “simply false.”
“A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement issued several hours later.
“As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White - lance on any US citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
Trump leveled the charges in a as his administration remains mired in controversy over communications of his senior aides including Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
‘Witch hunt’
Since US intelligence took the unprecedented step of publicly accusing Russia of trying to swing the November election in Trump’s favor, questions have swirled about whether some in his campaign colluded with Moscow.
The president’s associates, including Sessions and disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn, met Russian Ambassador Ser
Trump, who has accused his political foes of conducting “a total witch hunt,” on Saturday directed his Twitter tirade at his Democratic predecessor.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found,” Trump wrote a day after departing Washington for a weekend getaway at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort for the fourth time in
The president compared the alleged action to Senator Joe McCarthy’s campaign in the 1950s to root out supposed Communists and sympathizers, which was marked by innuendo and abusive investigations.
“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!” Trump said, again providing no proof of Obama’s supposed efforts to seek a court order to spy on the thencandidate.
‘Extraordinary’
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said a court would have approved such a wiretap only if there were cause.
“If there were the wiretap @realDonaldTrump loudly alleges, such an extraordinary warrant would only have been OKed by a court for a reason,” he said, referring to the president by his Twitter handle.
Republicans were mostly silent on Trump’s Twitter tirade.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican hosting a town hall in his native South Carolina, told the event that “if it is true, it would be the biggest political scandal since Watergate.”
Responding to Trump’s allegation that Obama was a “Bad (or sick) guy!,” Adam Schiff, a Democratic ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee said the president had gone too far.
“If there is something bad or sick going on, it is the willingness of the nation’s chief executive to make the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them,” Schiff said.
Trump delivered a well-received address to Congress late Wednesday, but the White House was plunged back into turmoil the following morning Sessions failed to disclose two meetings with Ambassador Kislyak during last year’s election campaign.
Trump has repeatedly denied having any personal ties to the Kremlin, and his aides have denied or down
But the accusations have continued amid almost daily leaks revealing new details about connections between
One such revelation in The Washington Post about a meeting between Sessions and Kislyak prompted the Republican former US senator to recuse himself from any investigations into the presidential election campaign.
Sessions told a Senate committee under oath that he “did not have communications with the Russians,” but reporters found that he had actually met the Russian ambassador twice in the months before taking up his post as attorney general, the top US law