FBI Director on Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped him: “I have no information that supports those tweets” https://t.co/9RXwkb3DtB pic.twitter.com/8EoLS2Z7xS
— CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2017
On Monday morning, FBI Director James Comey testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee about two major subjects. First, he publicly confirmed (for the first time) that the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s alleged ties with Russia. Secondly, he confronted President Trump’s baseless wiretapping accusations against former President Obama. Since Comey had already asked the Department of Justice to publicly reject Trump’s claims, there was little doubt to which way he’d roll.
Sure enough, Comey held firm to his previous stance. “I have no information that supports those tweets,” he stated. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI.” Comey also included the Department of Justice to remove all doubt on the situation: “The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components, the department has no information that supports those tweets.”
This is a significant moment, to say the least. The FBI director has testified under oath that no one from his agency (or the DOJ) authorized or participated within the (nonexistent) wiretapping of Trump on behalf of Obama. Then — incredibly — Comey was asked about all of Trump’s tweets on the subject. As each of Trump’s anger-tweets was read aloud, Comey answered that no available information can back up Trump’s claims.
Comey also painstakingly stressed that Obama, as an individual, could not have unilaterally authorized wiretapping against Trump, for this would have required approval from all three branches of government: “No president could.” (You can see this moment at around 1:55 in the full video at the bottom of this post.)
In addition, the head of the NSA (Admiral Michael S. Rogers) spoke on the White House’s subsequent accusations that British intelligence had aided Obama in wiretapping Trump. Again, the same answer surfaced … Trump made these accusations with zero evidence.
NSA director: We haven’t seen any evidence that anyone in the Obama administration asked the British to spy on Trump https://t.co/9S6ejLx1SF
— CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2017
Here’s a longer video of Comey’s testimony on wiretapping. (Also — since the beginning of the hearing, Trump has not tweeted even once. Is it possible that he’s realized how tweeting out a right-wing conspiracy theory may not pay off? Probably not.)