A former top intel official under President Obama asserted Sunday that President Trump’s phones were not tapped, contradicting a claim made by the current president.
“Obviously, I can’t speak officially anymore, but I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as [Director of National Intelligence], there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign,” James Clapper said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Clapper maintained that he would’ve been told of there was a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order to survey Trump’s phones on “something like this.”
“I can deny it,” Clapper said, asserting that an order related to Trump or Trump Tower does not exist to his “knowledge.”
But Clapper did concede that it is at least theoretically possible he had no knowledge of other governmental entities performing wire-taps on Trump.
“I can’t speak for other title-3 authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity,” Clapper said, seemingly referring to intel organizations not under his purview.
Clapper, as DNI under President Obama, produced the intel report that confidently asserted Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
He revealed in his Sunday interview that there was no evidence Trump or his campaign had colluded with Russians in their interference of the election.
“We had no evidence of such collusion,” he said on NBC.
On Saturday, Trump claimed on Twitter, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
The White House provided no evidence backing up Trump’s claims — and have called for a congressional investigation to get to the bottom of the matter.