Intel Chief: 'Clearly President Was Wrong' on Wiretap

Devin Nunes says HIC has found no evidence for Trump's claims
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 15, 2017 1:28 PM CDT
Intel Chief: No Evidence of Any Trump Wiretap
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, accompanied by the committee's ranking member, Rep. Adam Schiff, talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday.   (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Within a half-hour span on the morning of March 4, President Trump laid out a stunning series of tweets that made some serious accusations: namely, that then-President Obama had tapped his phones in Trump Tower shortly before the election. On Wednesday, the head of the House Intelligence Committee offered that panel's official take on any wiretapping evidence they've been presented with, which has amounted to exactly … none, per the Hill. "I don't think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower," the GOP's Devin Nunes—whom the Washington Post says has been "one of the few defenders of Trump's claims"—told reporters. To add to the "how do we take what the president tweets?" debate, Nunes added that should anyone take Trump's tweets literally, then "clearly the president was wrong" in this case.

The Post notes others who've disputed Trump's wiretapping allegations, including ex-director of national intelligence James Clapper (who insists that a FISA warrant, which would have been required to make the wiretapping legal, was never issued), FBI chief James Comey (who will be heading to Capitol Hill on Monday to testify about this), and Obama himself, whom Trump called a "bad (or sick) guy" in one of the tweets in question. Comey had wanted the DOJ, which Monday asked for more time to come up with proof to present to the HIC, to publicly rebuke Trump for his claims, which it has so far declined to do. On Tuesday, press secretary Sean Spicer—who tried to explain to reporters that his boss didn't mean wiretapping when he said "wiretapping"—said Trump was "extremely confident" the DOJ would prove him right and that the evidence would "vindicate" him. (More wiretapping stories.)

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