A court filing on late Friday about a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit confirmed that former President Barack Obama did not wiretap Donald Trump at Trump Tower. At the time that the real estate billionaire tweeted the accusation on March 4, he tweeted the wiretapping allegedly occurred just before the victory or during the presidential campaign.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
The Department of Justice, however, refused to state if the Obama administration conducted other types of surveillance were done.
The department cited national security concerns, The New York Post reported.
Watchdog group accuses Trump of lying
Following the response of the department, Austin Evers of American Oversight said in a statement “The FBI and Department of Justice have now sided with former Director [James] Comey and confirmed in writing that President Trump lied when he tweeted that former President Obama ‘wiretapped’ him at Trump Tower.”
When Trump accused Obama of wiretapping, Obama responded – which is a rare event – to denounce the accusation as simply false, Reuters reported. When the White House was asked for a comment on the confirmation by the FBI and Department of Justice, a spokeswoman said it is not news since the Trump administration answered it weeks ago.
Trump associates’ contact with foreigners
Weeks before the lawsuit, the White House tried to prove Trump’s accusation as true. It was behind an inquiry by Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee if the Obama administration had surveillance intercepts of the phone calls of Trump’s associates’ with foreigners.
On a hindsight, the Obama administration should have the Trump Tower – a mixed-used building in New York which is the residence and campaign headquarters of the real estate billionaire – wiretapped because the tower was where Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Nataliia Veselnitskaya on June 9. She came with several other Russians to offer to the Trump campaign team political dirt on the Democratic Party to help Trump win the election and defeat Hillary Clinton.
Initially, Donald Jr. claimed the meeting was just to discuss the adoption of Russian children by American families, but he subsequently admitted that before June 9, he got a series of emails from the Russian group that they have a dossier against Clinton that would help Trump beat Clinton at the polls.
