PALM BEACH, Fla. — A spokesman for former President Barack Obama says that “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.” Kevin Lewis says “any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”
The Obama spokesman was responding to President Donald Trump’s tweeted accusation that Obama had telephones at Trump Tower wiretapped during the election campaign.
Trump said in a series of early morning tweets that he “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!’
It’s not clear what prompted Trump’s charge.
In recent days, the Breitbart News website has published reports citing other anonymously sourced or unconfirmed reports about Obama administration attempts to investigate Trump campaign ties to Moscow. The Associated Press has not confirmed those reports.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Trump was making “the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them.”
Trump is spending the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida. After spending several hours at his West Palm Beach golf club, he is scheduled to have dinner with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and other White House advisers.
