White House urges Congress probe tapping
Print Edition
THE White House demanded yesterday that Congress investigate whether former President Barack Obama abused his executive powers in connection with the presidential election in 2016.
President Donald Trump leveled that claim on Saturday when he accused his predecessor of tapping telephones at Trump Tower. But Trump offered no supporting evidence, a spokesman for Obama denied the claim as “simply false” and lawmakers in both parties asked for proof.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement yesterday that reports “concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling.”
“President Donald J Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016,” Spicer said.
It was unclear what reports Spicer was referring to, and what prompted Trump to make the allegation.
Spicer ended the statement by saying that neither the White House nor Trump will comment further “until such oversight is conducted.”
In a series of morning tweets on Saturday, Trump suggested Obama was behind a politically motivated plot to upend his campaign. He compared the alleged events to “Nixon/Watergate” and “McCarthyism!” And he called Obama a “Bad (or sick) guy.”
The Watergate break-in during the Nixon administration led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation and the conviction of several aides. Republican Senator Joe McCarthy’s reckless and unsupported charges of communist infiltration in federal government during the 1950s gave rise to the term “McCarthyism.”
After Trump’s well-received speech to Congress on Tuesday, the tweets reflected the president’s growing frustration with the swirling allegations about his advisers’ ties to Russia, which are under FBI investigation, and his team’s inability to overcome them. Trump lashed out at his senior team during an Oval Office meeting on Friday, according to one White House official.
The White House did not respond to questions about what prompted the president’s accusations that Obama had tapped his phones.
Presidents cannot legally order wiretaps against US citizens. Obtaining wiretaps would require officials at the Justice Department to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is shrouded in secrecy.
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