FBI Director James Comey on Monday said the bureau had "no information" to support tweets from President Donald Trump accusing President Barack Obama of tapping Trump's phones before the 2016 election.
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FBI director shoots down Trump's explosive wiretap claims: 'I have no information that supports those tweets'
FBI Director James Comey on Monday said the bureau had "no information" to support President Donald Trump's claims that Trump Tower was wiretapped.
FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Intelligence Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 20, 2017.
"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 and we have looked carefully inside the FBI," Comey said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference in the election.
Comey said the Department of Justice as a whole also had no evidence that Trump Tower had been wiretapped.
"The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components," Comey said. "The department has no information that supports those tweets."
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Last week, the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee released a joint statement saying it saw no indication that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance either before or after Election Day.
"Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," said the statement, from Republican Chairman Richard Burr and Democratic Vice Chairman Mark Warner.
Trump leveled the accusations of wiretapping at the Obama administration in a series of tweets earlier this month.
"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process," Trump tweeted. "This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"
The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said earlier this month that Trump was "extremely confident" the Department of Justice would find evidence that the Obama administration wiretapped him before the election.
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Spicer also claimed that Trump had accused Obama of generally surveilling him, rather than of specifically wiretapping Trump's phones.
"I think there's no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election," Spicer said. "That is a widely reported activity that occurred back then."
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