Six months ago, in a series of tweets, President Trump made the claim that President Obama had wiretapped his campaign and personal offices at Trump Tower in New York City, comparing the alleged event to both Watergate and the accusations that Senator Joe McCarthy had made against many people in the 1950s about alleged ties to the Soviet Union. Notwithstanding these claims, there were numerous reported denials from the American intelligence and law enforcement communities, and from intelligence officials in the United Kingdom, who had been accused of playing a role in the surveillance by Fox News contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano. Both the GCHQ itself and Fox News strongly disputed Napolitano’s apparently baseless claims, but the Trump Administration continued to repeat these claims as if they were fact. Several weeks after Trump made his accusations, James Comey, who was still serving as F.B.I. Director at the time denied that any such surveillance had taken place in testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee. Despite these denials, and the fact that he was unable to produce any evidence to support his allegations, neither President Trump nor any member of his Administration has ever retracted the accusation or apologized to the former President for an accusation that was, effectively, an accusation that the Obama Administration had committed a serious crime during the course of a Presidential election.
Here are Trump’s original tweets:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Now, Trump’s own Department of Justice is admitting that there is no evidence to support the President’s accusation that his campaign had been wiretapped:
There is no evidence to support President Donald Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Justice Department said in a new court filing.
The DOJ made the statement in a motion for summary judgment filed Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the watchdog group American Oversight.
“Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets,” the government said, referring to the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
James Comey, who was FBI director at the time Trump made the statements, also said, in sworn testimony before Congress, that neither the FBI nor the Justice Department had information to support the tweets. Trump later fired Comey, a move that has come under increasing scrutiny amid federal investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
“The FBI and Department of Justice have now sided with former Director Comey and confirmed in writing that President Trump lied when he tweeted that former President Obama ‘wiretapped’ him at Trump Tower,” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight.
Trump has never produced any evidence to back up the explosive claim, which he made on Twitter in March, and which a spokesman for Obama promptly denied.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump wrote at the time.
“How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” Trump added.
None of this should come as a surprise, of course. The idea that the Obama Administration, or anyone in the Federal Government for that matter, was wiretapping Trump Tower was so ridiculous that the very suggestion was rejected out of hand at the time that Trump made them. However, the fact that Trump made such as serious allegation as President regarding his immediate predecessor was serious enough that it was legitimate to ask the Administration for evidence to support that allegation. When that evidence was never presented, it was logical to conclude that the President had no legitimate basis for making it at the time it was made and that he was essentially making things up out of thin air. In that regard, it’s worth noting that at the time Trump made the accusations, we were just beginning to hear evidence regarding potential evidence that people close to Trump had met with officials affiliated with or close to the Russian government during the course of the campaign. In fact, it was during the aforementioned committee appearance that Director Comey first publicly revealed the F.B.I. investigation that continues to this day, and, of course, it was less than two months after that appearance that Comey was eventually fired as F.B.I. Director. Clearly, Trump’s allegation was meant to divert public attention from the investigation that was threatening to get closer and closer to people associated with him.
Sadly, of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve caught the President lying, and it isn’t going to be the last. A list prepared by two reporters at The New York Times has counted the number of times the President has said something that is objectively untrue. As of right now, that list is only updated through July 21st and it was already quite extensive. Adding another lie to the list is kind of like adding another grain of sand to the beach.
Here’s the pleading filed by the Dept. of Justice:
American Oversight v. Dept. of Justice Et Al by Doug Mataconis on Scribd
