No evidence “thus far” of Trump’s wiretap claim: Chaffetz

President Donald Trump turned to Congress on Sunday for help finding evidence to support his unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama had Trump’s telephones tapped during the election. “I don’t think we should attack the president for tweeting”.

“I think that’s what we need to find out …”

Trump sparked the latest controversy in USA politics last weekend by saying that Obama had his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the election victory. Turned down by court earlier.

There’s also no indication so far that Trump’s phone calls were personally “tapped”. “Presidents don’t wiretap anyone”. Later in the day, an Obama spokesman said “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any United States citizen”. Trump completely ignored him. If it did, this suggests a lack of self-control that does not bode well for his presidency and may not bode well for the nation.

Dianne Feinstein, a member of both the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, told CNN she had seen no evidence that Obama had ordered a wiretap on Trump’s phone.

Nunes said he wants to know why top intelligence officials changed their assessment of Russia’s influence between December and January. The law was passed by Congress in 1978 and signed into law by former President Jimmy Carter. “That’s never happened before”.

Asked whether he could confirm or deny if a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Act warrant existed to engage in such wiretapping, Clapper again rejected the notion. “We’ve got more information we’ve got to get access to”.

The warrant application process is done in secret in a classified process. The president can declassify any documents at will. President Trump should then make as much of this material as possible public.

While Obama did not address the Twitter outburst on his own, a spokesman for the former president released a statement to contest the allegations.

A federal agency can also ask a federal district judge for a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance on US citizens it believes are committing serious crimes.

And that’s the thing – in order for a wiretap to be approved, there would have had to be probable cause of a crime or that Trump was an agent of a foreign government. Though the standard is a high bar to meet, applications are hardly ever denied. Such a criminal wiretap would go through the regular federal court system, not the special FISA court. “We’re going to air this very publicly”.

The Department of Justice, under the Obama administration, did obtain a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) warrant in October 2016, according to the BBC, to investigate transfers of money from Russian Federation.

“It’s a knowable, ‘yes or no, ‘” Jones said. The newspaper said Trump asked some aides whether an investigator “outside the government” could back up his claims.