Senate panel to probe Trump’s wiretap claim

Mr Trump said the wire tapping occurred in October.

Under U.S. law, a federal court would have to have found probable cause that the target of the surveillance is an “agent of a foreign power” in order to approve a warrant authorizing electronic surveillance of Trump Tower.

Clapper said he still believed, however, that Moscow had interfered in the November election to help Trump.

‘As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen’. The questions have been compounded by US intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered with the election to help Trump triumph over Hillary Clinton, along with disclosures about his aides’ contacts with a Russian official.

Indeed, within hours of the president’s tweets, it appeared as though his team had begun searching for evidence that might back up their boss’ claim, which would suggest that they didn’t possess said proof when Trump blasted out those messages to millions of people.

Still, however, the president is not accepting the House and Senate panels’ findings on the Obama allegations nor about Russian meddling because “it’s hard to pre-judge what they’re doing”, his press secretary said.

President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on February 15, 2017.

Kevin Lewis, spokesman for President Barack Obama, denied that the White House ordered surveillance on Mr. Trump or any private USA citizen.

“We need reliable data, and going all the way back to studies that Michael Boskin headed up a generation ago, there’s been a concern in our profession about investment in government statistics”, Hubbard, dean of Columbia University’s business school in NY, said to reporters at an economics conference.

Republicans steered clear of the merits of Mr. Trump’s allegation, saying they would wait for the facts to come out in the congressional investigations.

But he said he can’t speak for “other authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity”.

Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Meet the Press”, Susan Collins, R-Maine, on CBS’ “Face the Nation”, and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on “Meet the Press”, all called for full investigations, with Schumer pushing for a special prosecutor, of not only the president’s allegations but also of Russian efforts to influence the election. “And let’s go through this, as what we are doing. It just means we haven’t seen that yet”, Cotton added, speaking on Fox News Sunday.

Michael Mukasey, who served as attorney general to former President George W. Bush, told ABC News “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, “This is the difference between being correct and being right”. “I haven’t seen him this angry”.

The FBI sought and was granted in October a FISA court warrant for an investigation into suspected ties between Russian Federation and people connected to the Trump campaign, according to two sources and previous news reports.

The Associated Press, citing an unnamed source, also reported on Comey’s request to have the claim refuted by the Justice Department.

“The evidence is overwhelming”.

Trump dropped the latest political bombshell on Washington this past Saturday when he tweeted: “Terrible!”

During the 2016 election, Mr. Obama was a harsh critic of Mr. Trump, and frequently campaigned against him.