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US President Donald Trump claims Barack Obama had the “wires tapped” at Trump Tower. Picture: AFP/Saul Loeb
THE Republican-chaired intelligence committee has demanded the Trump administration provide evidence to back the US president’s claim that Barack Obama “tapped his wires”.
President Trump asserted in a tweet last week: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
He continued the allegation against former President Obama in other tweets but offered no evidence.
On Saturday, a senior congressional aide said the request for evidence by Monday was made in a letter sent by the committee chairman, Devin Nunes, a Republican representative from California, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff from California.
Mr Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has said that nothing matching Mr Trump’s claims had taken place during last year’s presidential campaign, but that has not quelled speculation that Mr Trump’s communications were monitored by the Obama administration.
Mr Trump has asked Congress to investigate.
Earlier, Mr Schiff said the committee would answer the president’s call to investigate the claim. He also said that he would ask FBI Director James Comey directly when he appears later this month before the full committee, which is investigating Russian activities during the election.
“We should be able to determine in fairly short order whether this allegation is true or false,” Mr Schiff told reporters on Tuesday evening at the Capitol.
Mr Nunes has said that so far he has not seen any evidence to back up Mr Trump’s claim and has suggested the news media were taking the president’s weekend tweets too literally.
“The president is a neophyte to politics — he’s been doing this a little over a year,” Mr Nunes told reporters earlier this week.
Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama of tapping “wires” at Trump Tower. Picture: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, FileSource:AP
Other politicians have asked for similar evidence. Declaring that Congress “must get to the bottom” of Mr Trump’s claim, Senators Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse asked Mr Comey and Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente to produce the paper trail created when the Justice Department’s criminal division secures warrants for wire-taps.
Senator John McCain said Mr Trump could “clear this up in a minute” if he were to call “the director of the CIA, director of national intelligence and say, ‘OK, what happened?”’
Senator McCain told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday: “I do believe on issues such as this, accusing a former president of the United States of something which is not only illegal, but just unheard of, that requires corroboration. I’ll let the American people be the judge, but this is serious stuff.”