Trump: Mama, he wiretapped me! More Russia story...

The Hill wrote:Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower
BY ELLIOT SMILOWITZ - 03/04/17

President Trump on Saturday claimed President Obama had his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower before Election Day, tweeting the accusation without offering evidence.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” he wrote.

“Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!” he added in subsequent tweets. “I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”

A spokesman for Obama issued a statement denying that his White House had interfered in Justice Department investigations or ordered surveillance on any American, much less Trump.

"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," Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said.

"As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen," he added. "Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

It was not immediately clear whether Trump had any proof or was referencing a report. Breitbart News on Friday reported on conservative radio host Mark Levin’s claim that Obama executed a “silent coup” of Trump via “police state” tactics. White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon was the executive chair of Breitbart before joining Trump’s team.

Observers have noted the president’s tendency to tweet things — including a 2003 photo tweeted Friday of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) with Russian President Vladimir Putin — shortly after they were published on pro-Trump blogs like Gateway Pundit or conservative websites like Drudge Report.

Moments earlier, Trump had also linked Obama to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s meetings last year with Russia’s U.S. ambassador.

“The first meeting Jeff Sessions had with the Russian Amb was set up by the Obama Administration under education program for 100 Ambs,” he tweeted.

Sessions on Thursday said he would recuse himself from any investigations into Russia’s links to Trump’s team, after massive outrage over the revelations that he met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice during the campaign, then denied doing so during his confirmation hearings.

Trump on Saturday also blasted Obama for meeting with Kislyak 22 times while president, tweeting: “Just out: The same Russian Ambassador that met Jeff Sessions visited the Obama White House 22 times, and 4 times last year alone.”

Trump’s team has sought to push back on accusations of coziness with Russia by pointing out instances of Democrats meeting with Kislyak. Critics have responded that the issue isn’t that Sessions met with the ambassador, but that he falsely told Congress he hadn’t while under oath.

Former national security advisor Michael Flynn was ousted last month after revelations that he misled top White House officials about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak.

ABC News wrote:WH spokeswoman doesn't think Trump accepts FBI's reported denial of alleged wiretapping

MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN, Good Morning America

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said today that she doesn't think President Trump accepts the FBI’s reported denial of his claims about being wiretapped in New York last year, adding she didn't know whether he had spoken to the law enforcement agency about the matter.

Answering a question from ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” about whether Trump accepted FBI Director James Comey's reported denial of his claims, Sanders replied, "You know, I don’t think he does, George."

Comey told the Justice Department to publicly refute Trump's unsubstantiated assertion that his predecessor, President Obama, ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower phones prior to the November 2016 election, government sources familiar with Comey's thinking told ABC News Sunday.

Comey expressed concerns that the president's tweets created the impression that the FBI acted improperly, and he wanted to set the record straight, the sources said.

Sanders, deputy White House press secretary, suggested to “Good Moring America” today that Trump's accusations could be right, and seemed to be referencing the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass collection of telephonic metadata from millions of Americans as evidence to support the claim, although she did not mention it directly.

"The administration was wiretapping American citizens," Sanders said. "His administration could have done this."

A spokesman for former President Obama issued a strong denial to Trump's accusation, and said that no White House official under his administration had ever ordered surveillance on a U.S. citizen.

"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," Obama spokesman Kevin 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."

Trump spokeswoman Sanders said the president wants Congress to investigate his claims.

"The president wants the truth to come out to the American people through the house intelligence committee and that is the process we go through," she said.

Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the Republican who serves as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement this weekend that the committee "will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates."

Yahoo Politics wrote:Donald Trump's wiretap claim 'could be a matter that brings down a president', former CIA analyst says

Samuel Osborne

The FBI disputing Donald Trump's claim Barack Obama had his telephones tapped during the election "could be a matter that brings down a president," a former CIA analyst has said.

"It doesn't happen at all," Aki Peritz, former CIA counter-terrorism analyst, told BBC Radio 4. "If the President is to be believed, Barack Obama had done something that is completely out of character and has not been done since the 1970s, and even then that caused all kind of scandal during the Nixon years."

Mr Peritz said Mr Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, "would never do this".

Over the weekend, FBI director James Comey argued the claim must be corrected by the Justice Department because it falsely insinuates the FBI broke the law.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer called for the US Congress to investigate Mr Trump's claim, which he said was based on "very troubling" reports "concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election".

Mr Spicer said the White House wants the congressional committees to "exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016".

Despite the severity of his claim, Mr Trump did not provide any evidence Mr Obama was responsible for surveillance at his property and has not provided any since.

Mr Peritz said: "When director Comey comes out and probably repudiates this accusation by the president, we've set up a very interesting uncharted place where you have one of our top law enforcement officials going up against the president."

When asked if it was a truly serious matter, he replied: "This could be a matter that brings down a president. It also could be nothing at all.

"The US government really has to do a very thorough investigation into the relationships, if they exist, between the Russian government, the Russian intelligence services and individuals in the Trump campaign during and after the campaign."

He also said: "If the FBI is actually surveilling individuals, it was probably legitimate legal targets such as the Russian ambassador or individuals in Moscow involved in the intelligence services and they in turn were talking to people.

"But the American citizens in New York city are not the actual targets unless they have been identified by the FBI as agents of a foreign power, or a terrorist."

Mr Obama has denied ever ordering the wiretapping of any US citizen and his spokesman Kevin Lewis said a “cardinal rule” of his administration was that “no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice”.

Former director of national intelligence James Clapper flatly denied the existence of an order to bug Mr Trump.