Trump Seeks Probe After Claiming Obama Wiretapped Phones; FBI Asked DOJ To Publicly Reject Claims

The Trump administration is calling on congressional committees investigating the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election to look into whether then President Obama abused powers of the executive branch prior to the election. The White House called for the inquiry a day after President Donald Trump accused Obama, without proof, of wiretapping his phones at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign.

In a statement issued Sunday by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, which he repeated in full on his Twitter account, Spicer said "reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling." It was unclear which reports Spicer was referring to.

Spicer ended the statement by saying that neither the White House nor the president would be commenting further until such an oversight is conducted.

The New York Times reported Sunday afternoon that FBI director James Comey asked the Justice Department to publicly reject Trump's assertion over the wiretapping claims. So far, no such statement has been released. Comey reportedly asked DOJ officials to release the statement because there is no evidence to support the wiretapping claims and it implies that the FBI broke the law. According to the Times' report, senior FBI officials are also worried that the notion of a court-approved wiretap would raise the public's expectations that officials have significant information linking members of the Trump campaign to Russia.

In a series of Tweets Saturday, Trump said he had "just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. "Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!" he wrote. He wondered whether it was legal for a sitting president to do so and said a lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that Obama was tapping his phones in October.

Speculation swirled that Trump was basing the accusations he made Saturday on an article on the Breitbart News site or the words conservative radio host Mark Levin. Both have promoted the idea that Obama and his administration used “police state” tactics last fall to monitor the Trump team.

Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama dismissed the allegations as "simply false."

“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,” Lewis said in a statement Saturday. “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.”

As the Associated Press notes, presidents cannot order wiretaps against U.S. citizens and obtaining them would require Department of Justice officials to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) issued a statement saying the president should explain whether it was a legal or an illegal wiretap and how he knows this.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) addressed the president's tweets during a town hall in Clemson, South Carolina.

"So apparently this morning President Trump tweeted out that he believes that President Obama ordered wiretapping of his campaign," Graham said.

Graham's constituents could be heard laughing as he spoke about the president's tweets.

He said he doesn't know if it's true or not but if Obama had illegally ordered the wiretapping it would be the biggest political scandal since Watergate. Conversely, he said if Obama was able to lawfully obtain a warrant to monitor the Trump campaign for violating the law, that would be the biggest scandal since Watergate.

Speaking on MSNBC Sunday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said there was no wiretap activity "mounted against the president, the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign." Asked by Chuck Todd if there was a FISA court order existed, he said "I can deny it."

Pressed again about whether there was a FISA court order to monitor Trump Tower, Clapper said, "not to my knowledge."

Trump's campaign has been embroiled in controversy over alleged contacts with Russia. The contacts forced former national security advisor Michael Flynn to resign. Most recently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he would recuse himself from the DOJ probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election after it was revealed that, contrary to his Senate testimony, the former senator had contact with Russia during the presidential campaign.

Cody Fenwick and Colin Miner contributed to this report

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