NEW YORK // There is no evidence to support US president Donald Trump’s claim that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered his phones to be tapped, the FBI director said for the first time on Monday.
Speaking during a congressional hearing, James Comey also took the rare step of confirming that his agency was investigating whether the Trump election campaign had coordinated with Russia over a computer hacking campaign designed to hobble his rival Hillary Clinton.
Mr Trump’s team has been under intense scrutiny for ties to Russian officials ever since the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) concluded that Russian president Vladimir Putin tried to influence the election.
The president has attempted to deflect attention from the issue by raising concerns about surveillance directed at him during and after the campaign.
Mr Comey said the FBI and the department of justice had no evidence to support Mr Trump’s claims.
“With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets,” he told the house intelligence committee.
Such a wiretap could not be ordered unilaterally by a president but would require an application to the courts, he said.
Mr Comey appeared alongside Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the NSA, as they answered questions about Mr Trump’s allegations and Russian hacking.
Mr Comey also dismissed White House allegations that Britain’s listening station had been used to circumvent restrictions on US agencies spying on American citizens.
The question of ties to Russia has haunted Mr Trump’s administration in its first two months.
The president has already lost a national security adviser to the scandal and his attorney general has been forced to remove himself from any investigation into the issue after it emerged he misled congressmen by not revealing his meetings with the Russian ambassador to Washington before taking office.
Mr Comey said the FBI rarely confirmed it was holding an investigation unless there was a strong public interest.
“This is one of those circumstances,” he said.
“The FBI, as part of our counter-intelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” Mr Comey said, including “the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts”.
He said the investigation had been under way since July and but he could not say how long it would take.
Hours before the hearing, Mr Trump took to Twitter to deliver a pre-emptive rebuttal, accusing Democrats of inventing a scandal.
“The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign,” he wrote. “Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!”
He also repeated his demand that investigations focus not on his campaign but on who leaked details of links to Russia.
“The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information,” he said.
Throughout the controversy Mr Trump’s comments have only intensified the swirling questions.
Two weeks ago he accused Mr Obama of ordering that his phones be tapped.
“How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process,” he wrote in one of a series of tweets. “This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Since then his officials — and Mr Trump himself — have gently tried to walk back the claims, saying the president was talking about “tapping” in a more metaphorical sense, suggesting he had merely alleged he was under some broad form of surveillance.
Last week, the White House managed to anger its closest ally Britain by repeating assertions that its electronic listening centre was behind the monitoring.
Sean Spicer, Mr Trump’s spokesman, quoted Judge Andrew Napolitano’s comments on Fox News about Mr Obama: “He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence finding agency.”
Intelligence analysts say that Mr Trump’s allegations are in danger of undermining Americans’ confidence in their own security agencies and in the office of the president.
Devin Nunes, chairman of the house intelligence committee, also said there was no evidence to support the idea that Mr Obama ordered a tap.
“We know there was not a physical wire tap of Trump Tower,” he said. “However, it is still possible that other surveillance activities were used against President Trump and his associates.”
The senate intelligence committee is due to hold a similar hearing later this month.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
