WASHINGTON
— The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department
this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that
President Barack Obama
ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials
said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is
false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not
released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation
on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock
down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the
law, the officials said.
A
spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the
spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.
Mr.
Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting
the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning
Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation underscores the high stakes
of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the
former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young
administration.
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The
White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr.
Trump’s claims. On Sunday, the president demanded a congressional
inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal law
enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a
statement from his spokesman, Mr. Trump called “reports” about the
wiretapping “very troubling” and said that Congress should examine them
as part of its investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election.
Along
with concerns about potential attacks on the bureau’s credibility,
senior F.B.I. officials are said to be worried that the notion of a
court-approved wiretap will raise the public’s expectations that the
federal authorities have significant evidence implicating the Trump
campaign in colluding with Russia’s efforts to disrupt the presidential
election.
One
problem Mr. Comey has faced is that there are few senior politically
appointed officials at the Justice Department who can make the decision
to release a statement, the officials said. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions recused himself
on Thursday from all matters related to the federal investigation into
connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.
Mr.
Comey’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to
his actions last year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton
email case and disregarded Justice Department entreaties not to.
In
his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his
press secretary, Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said,
“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.”
Mr.
Spicer, who repeated the entire statement in a series of Twitter
messages, added that “neither the White House nor the president will
comment further until such oversight is conducted.”
A
spokesman for Mr. Obama and his former aides have called the accusation
by Mr. Trump completely false, saying that Mr. Obama never ordered any
wiretapping of a United States citizen.
“A
cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House
official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the
Department of Justice,” Kevin Lewis, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, said in a
statement on Saturday.
Mr.
Trump’s demand for a congressional investigation appears to be based,
at least in part, on unproved claims by Breitbart News and conservative
talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing the
tapping of the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides at Trump Tower in New
York.
In
a series of Twitter messages on Saturday, the president seemed to be
convinced that those claims were true. In one post, Mr. Trump said, “I’d
bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that
President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to
Election!”
On
Sunday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary,
said the president was determined to find out what had really happened,
calling it potentially the “greatest abuse of power” that the country
has ever seen.
“Look,
I think he’s going off of information that he’s seen that has led him
to believe that this is a very real potential,” Ms. Sanders said on
ABC’s “This Week” program. “And if it is, this is the greatest overreach
and the greatest abuse of power that I think we have ever seen and a
huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to
know if this took place.”
The
claims about wiretapping appear similar in some ways to the unfounded
voter fraud charges that Mr. Trump made during his first days in the
Oval Office. Just after Inauguration Day, he reiterated in a series of
Twitter posts his belief that millions of voters had cast ballots
illegally — claims that also appeared to be based on conspiracy theories
from right-wing websites.
As
with his demand for a wiretapping inquiry, Mr. Trump also called for a
“major investigation” into voter fraud, saying on Twitter that
“depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” No
investigation has been started.
Senior
law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama
administration have said there were no secret intelligence warrants
regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R.
Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“There
was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the
time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper added.
Mr.
Trump’s demands for a congressional investigation were initially met
with skepticism by lawmakers, including Republicans. Appearing on CNN’s
“State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of
Florida, said he was “not sure what it is that he is talking about.”
“I’m not sure what the genesis of that statement was,” Mr. Rubio said.
Pressed
to elaborate on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Rubio said, “I’m not going to be a
part of a witch hunt, but I’m also not going to be a part of a
cover-up.”
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