Donald Trump asks US Congress to probe wiretaps by Barack Obama

The Wall Street Journal says former president Obama is “furious” with President Trump for blaming him for wiretapping his offices at Trump Tower during the presidential campaign.

In fact, as ABC News reports, all FISA wiretaps must be approved by the attorney general. Later in the day, an Obama spokesman said “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any USA citizen”.

Among voters not affiliated with either party, there is an even 50-50 split.

Press secretary Sean Spicer only went as far as saying Trump had access to “very troubling” reports.

Asked if he learned anything that might alter direction of the investigation, Warner said: “Some of the things begged more questions”.

Both FBI Director James Comey and the former director of national intelligence James Clapper have denied that any order for wiretapping was requested or issued, The Journal said, and several White House staff members have declined to explain what prompted Trump to make the accusations.

But many experts feel that tensions between the executive branch and the intelligence community have reached new heights under Trump, who has criticized USA intelligence agencies on Twitter rather than privately to his staff, as Nixon and Clinton did.

Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Monday that Trump needs to give more information to the American people and Congress about his wiretapping accusations.

That’s exactly what Congress is going to do, despite no evidence that it actually happened.

“The intelligence community works for the president, so if a president wanted to know whether surveillance had been conducted on a particular target, all he’d have to do is ask.”

In a report delivered January 6 to then-President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump, the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency said Putin had personally ordered the hacks as part of an effort to damage Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“I think that’s what we need to find out …”

A spokesman for Obama, Kevin Lewis, called “any suggestion” that Obama or any White House official ordered surveillance against Trump “simply false”. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.

Rather than focusing on important issues facing the country, official Washington has devolved into an embarrassing match of Democrats-said-President-Trump-said, in a daily war of words and tweets. “It’s accusing a former president of the United States of violating the law”.

Trump is said to have a long history of paranoia over wiretaps. “The alternative is a different kind of a scandal and that is a scandal of a sitting US president alleging that his predecessor engaged in the most unscrupulous and unlawful conduct”. If Trump doesn’t follow through on his promise to tax companies who move jobs overseas, he can just flash the Get Out of Jail Free card again.