On Monday afternoon, “the Department of Justice placed calls to representatives of the Chairman and Ranking Member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to ask for additional time to review the request,” spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said.
The DOJ seeks to determine “what, if any responsive documents may exist” that could pertain to Trump’s claim that his predecessor is a “bad (or sick) guy” for allegedly “wiretapping.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump used quotes around “wiretapping” so as to leave the possibility open that other surveillance tactics were used.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
“There’s no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election,” Spicer stated, adding that “the President used the word wiretaps in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Privately, FBI Director James Comey asked the DOJ to publicly denounce claims that the intelligence community had executed a surveillance operation targeting the Trump campaign. Counterintelligence operations occurring within the domestic sphere fall under the purview of the FBI, meaning Comey’s agency would have been the organization to carry out a surveillance mission against Trump.
Trump’s claim was made on the basis of an article by right-wing media outlet Breitbart which claimed that a conservative radio show host alleged that the Trump Tower was watched during Trump’s presidential election bid. A President can summon the directors of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and DNI at any time to ask whether the allegations took place. Currently there are no indications Trump has done so, or plans to do so. By failing to produce evidence for his startling claims, Trump has created a new media narrative for TV stations and pundits to coalesce around, that many consider to be false.
Trump claims that it is the job of the Justice Department, not the White House, to produce information to the House committee. On Sunday, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain said, “I think the president has one of two choices: either retract or to provide the information that the American people deserve, because, if his predecessor violated the law, [if] President Obama violated the law, we have got a serious issue here, to say the least.”
Representatives of the Obama administration have blasted the allegations as “simply false.”
