Trump, citing no evidence, accuses Obama of ‘Nixon/Watergate’ plot to wiretap Trump Tower
President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election.
While citing no evidence to support his explosive allegation, Trump said in a series of four tweets sent Saturday morning that Obama was “wire tapping” his New York offices before the election in a move he compared to McCarthyism. “Bad (or sick) guy!” he said of his predecessor, adding that the surveillance resulted in “nothing found.”
Trump offered no citations nor did he point to any credible news report to back up his accusation, but he may have been referring to commentary on Breitbart and conservative talk radio suggesting that Obama and his administration used “police state” tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team. The Breitbart story, published Friday, has been circulating among Trump’s senior staff, according to a White House official who described it as a useful catalogue of the Obama administration’s activities.
Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement early Saturday afternoon: “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. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
Senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the wide-ranging federal investigation into Russian interference in the election said Saturday that there had been no wiretap of Trump.
Officials at Justice and the FBI declined to comment.
Trump has been feuding with the intelligence community since before he took office, convinced that career officers as well as holdovers from the Obama administration have been trying to sabotage his presidency. He has ordered internal inquiries to find who leaked sensitive information regarding communications during the campaign between Russian officials and his campaign associates and allies, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Read the full story at The Washington Post.
FILE – In this Feb. 27, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Trump is accusing former President Barack Obama of having Trump’s telephones “wire tappedââ during last year’s election, but Trump isnât offering any evidence or saying what prompted the allegation. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
FILE – In this Feb. 27, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Trump is accusing former President Barack Obama of having Trump’s telephones “wire tappedââ during last year’s election, but Trump isnât offering any evidence or saying what prompted the allegation. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)