Intelligence committee leaders undercut Trump’s wiretap claim

The ranking Republican and Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday joined a growing list of credible officials to rebut President Donald Trump’s March 4 claim that he was illegally wiretapped by then-President Barack Obama during the presidential election.

Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, told reporters his panel has no evidence that such a wiretap occurred, or at least none that Trump or his administration was able to offer by a previously set Monday deadline.

“I don't think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower,” Nunes told reporters Wednesday. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Burbank Rep. Adam Schiff, rebuked the president for his tweets.

"You can't level an accusation of that type without either retracting it or explaining just why it was done," Rep. Schiff said.

Trump made his accusations against his predecessor as president in a series of March 4 tweets in which he said he’d “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory” in the presidential election.

“How long has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” Trump tweeted.

A number of high-level officials have pushed back against those claims despite the White House’s insistence that evidence of such wiretapping exists.

The day after Trump made those claims, Obama’s last director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said plainly “I can deny it” when asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd whether he could confirm or deny the existence of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order that would have been required for such a wiretapping to occur.

That same day, The New York Times reported that FBI Director James Comey pushed the Department of Justice to publicly reject Trump’s claim given that it suggests the agency broke the law. Comey is expected to answer questions on the matter in a congressional hearing on March 20.

As the list of officials pushing back against Trump’s claim grows, so do the calls from others to get Trump to either walk back his claim or produce evidence. Others are more willing to move on.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, however, is impatient with the FBI. On Wednesday, he said Congress should consider issuing subpoenas to collect information on whether the FBI got a warrant to conduct a wiretap on Trump Tower phones.

Should Congress or the president finally put the whole thing to rest already? Chime in if you’re also ready to move on.

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Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez