PALM BEACH, Fla. -- President Donald Trump turned to Congress on Sunday for help finding evidence to support his unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama had Trump's telephones tapped before the election. Obama's intelligence chief said no such action was ever carried out, and a U.S. official said the FBI has asked the Justice Department to dispute the allegation.
Republican leaders of Congress appeared willing to honor the president's request, but the move has potential risks for the president, particularly if the House and Senate intelligence committees unearth damaging information about Trump, his aides or his associates.
Trump claimed in a series of tweets Saturday that his predecessor had tried to undermine him by tapping the telephones at Trump Tower, the New York skyscraper where Trump based his campaign and transition operations, and maintains a home.
Speaking on an NBC News show Sunday morning, Obama's former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, denied that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretap was authorized against Trump or the campaign during his tenure.
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"There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate or against his campaign," Clapper said on Meet the Press, adding that he would "absolutely" have been informed if the FBI had obtained such a warrant.
"I can deny it," Clapper said emphatically.
Other representatives for the former president also denied Trump's allegation.
The comments followed a White House statement doubling down on Trump's explosive series of tweets and calling for a congressional inquiry into "politically motivated investigations."
In his claims early Saturday morning, the president tweeted that he "just found out" that Obama had "wires tapped" in Trump Tower before the election, comparing it to "McCarthyism."
"Is it legal for a sitting President to be 'wire tapping' a race for president prior to an election?" Trump asked in another tweet. "Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!"
White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Sunday cited "reports" of "potentially politically motivated investigations" during the 2016 campaign, calling them "troubling." He did not disclose any of the reports on which the White House was basing its claim.
His statement continued: "President Donald J. 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.
"Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted," the statement added.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi took offense to the White House statement and likened it to autocratic behavior.
"It's called a wrap-up smear. You make up something. Then you have the press write about it. And then you say, everybody is writing about this charge. It's a tool of an authoritarian," Pelosi said on CNN's State of the Union.
The FBI has asked the Justice Department to dispute Trump's allegations, a U.S. official said Sunday. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the request by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
No such statement has been issued by the Justice Department. Spokesman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment Sunday, and an FBI spokesman also did not comment.
The New York Times reported that senior American officials say FBI Director James Comey has argued that the claim must be corrected by the Justice Department because it falsely insinuates that the FBI broke the law.
Spicer's chief deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said she thinks Trump is "going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential."
Sanders repeatedly said that the president's allegation was worth looking into.
"He's asking that we get down to the bottom of this, let's get the truth here, let's find out," Sanders said on ABC's This Week. "I think the bigger story isn't who reported it, but is it true. And I think the American people have a right to know if this happened, because if it did, again, this is the largest abuse of power that, I think, we have ever seen."
Asked whether Trump truly believes Obama wiretapped him, Sanders deflected.
"I would say that his tweet speaks for itself there," she said.
The White House's escalation of Trump's claims was kept at arm's length by congressional Republicans appearing on Sunday morning news broadcasts.
Cotton: 'No evidence'
When asked about Trump's allegations, Senate Intelligence Committee member Tom Cotton, R-Ark., declined to comment on the president's tweets but said he has "seen no evidence of the allegations."
"Whether that's a FISA court application or denial of that application or a resubmission of that application, that doesn't mean that none of these things happened. It just means we haven't seen that yet," Cotton added, speaking on Fox News Sunday.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said he is not aware of evidence to back up the president's claim.
"I have no insight into exactly what he's referring to," Rubio said on Meet the Press. "The president put that out there, and now the White House will have to answer for exactly what he was referring to."
Obama's allies were more blunt, denying flatly that the former president had ordered a wiretap of Trump's campaign.
"This may come as a surprise to the current occupant of the Oval Office, but the president of the United States does not have the authority to unilaterally order the wiretapping of American citizens," said former Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told Meet the Press that Trump is "in trouble" and acting "beneath the dignity of the presidency."
"The president's in trouble if he falsely spread this kind of information," Schumer said. "It shows this president doesn't know how to conduct himself."
Earnest, appearing on ABC's This Week, added that Trump was attempting to distract from the controversy involving contacts between his campaign aides, including now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Russian officials.
"We know exactly why President Trump tweeted what he tweeted," Earnest added. "Because there is one page in the Trump White House crisis management playbook, and that is simply to tweet or say something outrageous to distract from a scandal. And the bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the tweet."
Congress to investigate
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in a statement that the panel "will follow the evidence where it leads, and we will continue to be guided by the intelligence and facts as we compile our findings."
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the committee "will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates."
The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said Trump was following "a deeply disturbing pattern of distraction, distortion and downright fabrication."
The office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., referred questions to Nunes, while a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell would not tell the Senate committee how to do its work.
Trump said in the tweets that he had "just found out" about being wiretapped, though it was unclear whether he was referring to having found out through a briefing, a conversation or a media report. The president in the past has tweeted about unsubstantiated and provocative reports he reads on blogs or conservative websites.
The tweets stood out, given the gravity of the charge and the strikingly personal attack on the former president. Trump spoke as recently as last month about how much he likes Obama and how much they get along, despite their differences.
"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" he tweeted, misspelling "tap."
Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said Saturday that a "cardinal rule" of the Obama administration was not to interfere in Justice Department investigations, which are supposed to be conducted free of outside or political influence.
Lewis said neither Obama nor any White House official had ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. "Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," Lewis said.
Trump used a similar approach with his unsupported claims of voter fraud that he said caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. He eventually said he wanted to launch a "major" investigation to find the 3 million to 5 million votes he claims were cast illegally. Congressional leaders were cool to the idea -- a costly and time-consuming effort.
Trump has been trailed for months by questions about his campaign's ties to Russia. Compounding the situation is the U.S. intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia interfered with the election to help Trump triumph over Clinton, along with disclosures about his aides' contacts with a Russian official.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., said Sessions should reappear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington.
It was a question by Franken during Sessions' confirmation hearing that elicited the then-nominee's assertion that he had not met with any Russians during the presidential campaign, to which Sessions was an adviser.
Franken, appearing on ABC's This Week, said he wanted to give Sessions "the benefit of the doubt," but that the attorney general needed to explain why he had not acknowledged two meetings with the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak, during the 2016 campaign.
After The Washington Post's disclosure of the meetings, Sessions recused himself from investigations of Russian involvement in the campaign, but Franken said that did not end the matter.
"The attorney general owes it to the Judiciary Committee to come back and explain himself," Franken said. "If he lied knowingly, he committed perjury."
Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Laura King of Tribune News Service; and by Abby Phillip, Ellen Nakashima, Aaron Blake, Greg Jaffe and Robert Costa of The Washington Post.
A Section on 03/06/2017