On Saturday, a spokesman for Obama said the former president had not ordered any such surveillance. On Sunday a former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, went further, denying the existence of any surveillance order at Trump Tower, at least during his tenure.
In his demand for an investigation, White House press secretary Sean Spicer did not provide any evidence for the president’s claims, but said reports about “potentially politically motivated investigations” were “very troubling”.
He did not specify what reports were in question, though late last week rightwing radio and news sites, including the website recently run by the president’s chief strategist,circulated the idea that Obama had tried to undermine the Trump campaign.
In a statement, Spicer said the president had asked congressional intelligence committees to “exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016”.
But Clapper rejected Trump’s claims on the record, and the director of the FBI reportedly asked the justice department to tell the public the president’s allegations were false.
The FBI and Congress are already investigating Russian interference in the election, and American intelligence agencies have concluded that hackers acting on behalf of the Kremlin broke into Democratic party servers in support of Trump.
Within an hour of the White House request, Clapper appeared on NBC’s
Meet the Press and denied the existence of any wiretap operation at
Trump Tower while he was in office. “For the part of the national
security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI,” Clapper said, “there was no
such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time,
or as a candidate or against his campaign.”Host Chuck Todd then asked whether as director of national intelligence he would know about any federal court order authorizing an FBI surveillance operation.
“I would know that,” Clapper replied. “Something like this absolutely.”
Todd asked: “And at this point you can’t confirm or deny whether that exists?”
“I can deny it,” he said.
“Not to my knowledge,” Clapper said. “No.”
Later on Sunday, the New York Times cited anonymous senior officials to report that FBI director James Comey had argued within the justice department that the nation’s highest law enforcement officials should publicly refute the president’s words because they were false. Comey has drawn scom from democrat for months over his public handling of a separate investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
The director has reportedly struggled to find an authority able to accede to his request. Attorney general Jeff Sessions recued himself from the Russia investigation last week after it was found that, under oath, he had failed to disclose meetings last year with Russia’s ambassador.
Although Spicer pledged that the White House would not comment on its request, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appeared on the ABC program This Week. She would not say if Trump had based his accusation on an intelligence briefing, a news report or something else.
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