President Donald Trump on Saturday accused former President Barack Obama of having Trump Tower telephone lines “wire tapped” during last year’s election, but Trump didn’t offer any evidence or say what prompted the allegation.
Trump, whose administration has been under siege over campaign contacts with Russian officials, said in a series of early morning tweets that he “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!’
Trump said the wiretapping occurred in October. Trump ran the presidential transition largely out of Trump Tower in New York, where he also maintains a residence.
The White House did not immediately reply to inquiries about what led to the president’s tweets. A spokesman for Obama did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s tweets came days after revelations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, during his Senate confirmation hearing, didn’t disclose his own campaign-season contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Sessions, a U.S. senator at the time, was Trump’s earliest Senate supporter.
Trump’s first tweet Saturday mentioned Sessions and claimed the first meeting Sessions had with the Russian diplomat was “set up by the Obama Administration under education program for 100 Ambs …”
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the campaign with the goal of helping elect Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton — findings that Trump has dismissed. The FBI has investigated Trump associates’ ties to Russian officials. Trump has blamed Democrats for leaks of information about the investigation and the contacts.
It was not clear what prompted Trump’s new charge. The president often tweets about reports he reads on blogs and conservative-leaning websites.
In recent days, the Breitbart News website has published reports citing other anonymously sourced or unconfirmed reports about the Obama administration’s attempts to investigate Trump campaign ties to Moscow.
The Associated Press has not confirmed those reports.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist in the White House, is the former executive chairman of Breitbart News.
Trump is spending the weekend at his waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after highlighting his education agenda and support for school choice on Friday by visiting a Catholic school in Orlando. Trump had no public events scheduled during the weekend.
After tweeting Saturday about Obama, as well as about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to leave “The New Celebrity Apprentice,” Trump went to his golf club in nearby West Palm Beach. Schwarzenegger replaced Trump as host of the show while the president remained its executive producer.
Trump planned to return to the White House late Sunday.
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8 thoughts on “Trump says Obama wiretapped him”
40 days in and he’s already doing a bad rendition of Capt. Quig in “The Caine Mutiny.” Soon he’ll be explaining how the mess boys in the WH have stolen the ice cream and if he only has a few ….. You get the picture.
Trump’s paranoia will end with either he’s going to be a one term president exhibiting profound paranoia, and a real moron (only because the Republicans won’t do anything to get him out), or he and members of his administration will be cited for the lies that they’ve been telling since the campaign, and they’ll lose reelection (we can only hope). But the Republicans have a propaganda machine that the Dems can’t even come close to duplicating. Hopefully, the media he loves to hate and which gave him millions of dollars in free publicity during the campaign will finally grow a pair and keep telling the truth about him.
He’s doing the job for free, but his frequent trips to Florida are going to cots us millions.
Trips to Florida? He’s already costing the nation $180 million a year just ’cause his wife won’t live with him. (Security on Trump Tower)
One wonders how long we’ll have to live with him.
J.
Obama, President over one of the most scandal free Administrations in recent years, but yeah Trumpenstein, he would risk his Legacy to illegally wire tap your sorry ass… Quit LYING to us!!
What a POS. Impeach this Fraud, NOW!
With no proof, I believe that Der Fuehrer is getting even more paranoid. At least it took Nixon years to get this way. Not weeks. But not to worry. There are plenty of morons who’ll believe what he claims.
If it is true that the Obama era Justice department got a Judge to sign off on a warrant to tap Trump’s phones, Trump is in deep brown stuff. He may live to regret this series of tweets.
More groundless accusations from the Accuser-in-Chief? What ever happened to his proof of voter fraud? No not the Breitbart (fake news) proof, but legal evidence; you know the kind that would hold up in court.
Again in Florida? How many weekends does this make now? Seems like President Donald (frequent flyer) Trump takes more trips to Florida in seven weeks at tax payer expense than President Obama did to Hawaii in eight years.
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