WASHINGTON – The House intelligence committee asked the executive branch to provide by Monday any evidence to support President Donald Trump‘s claim that his phones were tapped at Trump Tower during the election, a senior congressional aide said Saturday.
The request was made in a letter sent by committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., according to the aide, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the request by name and requested anonymity.
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In a tweet last weekend, Trump accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of ordering the tap. Obama’s director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has said that nothing matching Trump’s claims had taken place, but that has not quelled speculation that Trump’s communications were monitored by the Obama administration. Trump has not provided evidence to support his claim and has asked Congress to investigate.
Early this week, Schiff said the committee would answer the president’s call to investigate the claim. He also said that he would ask FBI Director James Comey directly when he appears later this month before the full committee, which is investigating Russian activities during the election.
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“We should be able to determine in fairly short order whether this allegation is true or false,” Schiff told reporters Tuesday evening at the Capitol.
Nunes has said that so far he has not seen any evidence to back up Trump’s claim and has suggested the news media were taking the president’s weekend tweets too literally.
“The president is a neophyte to politics – he’s been doing this a little over a year,” Nunes told reporters earlier this week.
Other lawmakers have asked for similar evidence.
Declaring that Congress “must get to the bottom” of Trump’s claim, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., asked Comey and Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente to produce the paper trail created when the Justice Department’s criminal division secures warrants for wiretaps.
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