The Trump White House was given a Monday deadline to prove that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, as President Trump made the claim at a rally during the first week of March. Since then (depending on sides "for" or "against" Trump) the media has covered the claim as something to either take seriously as a deflection away from serious issues or serious, as more "proof" that Obama's White House was on a "witch-hunt" to hurt Trump.
Congress has been mostly silent about many of these Trump-made-conspiracies, as they have their hands full with repealing President Obama's Affordable Care Act. But after the current president made the accusation, members of the House Intelligence Committee decided to call his bluff and requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) -- part of the White House Executive Branch -- provide evidence that the phones at Trump Tower had been wiretapped.
Media treats accusations seriously
It's no secret that President Donald Trump is at war with the media for their negative coverage of him. This view is not subjective to just Donald Trump, even though the current political climate would try and make one believe that to even acknowledge it is to still take a negative position against the President.
The fact that Washington lawmakers had given the DOJ a deadline appears to have given the media reason enough to comb through every story and view over claims of Wiretapping. One example of them taking the claim seriously was in an interview with former Press Secretary Josh Earnest on ABC's This Week.
Martha Raddatz was very assertive with Earnest to question their denial that they had wiretapped Trump Tower, based off of a tweet from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau who said, "I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the WH (White House) ordered it." Rather than Raddatz interpreting the tweet as the suggestion that it would be a waste of time, she took it as saying literally that if the former president nor his White House ordered a wiretap; what other departments could have?
This leaves room for doubt, for those who are taking the claim seriously.
Executive branch scrambling to prove and deflect
Over the weekend, Trump's White House attempted to change the view of the President's conspiracy theory starting with the President's Counselor Kellyanne Conway who veered away from the wiretapping of phones and suggested that other devices could be used to plant surveillance. By Monday, she herself said that she did not have any evidence of this, the first confirmation of no proof from the executive branch. Press Secretary Sean Spicer, however, said in a press briefing at noon that the President "doesn't really think" that the former president himself went over to tap his phone.
As former Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained in the This Week interview, there is a process required before wiretapping would take place. However, there has never been a case where a president would act as the technician and complete the wiretapping themselves. So no one has actually ever believed that President Obama had himself wiretapped Trump Tower. Rather; that the administration ordered it, which the Intelligence Committee is asking proof for. The implication that anyone would have thought otherwise was completely introduced by Sean Spicer's statement.
He continued to say that there was, "no question that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred during the 2016 election." He also added that the President used "wiretapping" to broadly mean surveillance and other activities.
On Monday, the Justice Department also contacted Intelligence Committee chairmen asking for more time to provide evidence. According to a CNN report titled "Justice department asks for more time to collect evidence on Trump wiretap claims," some members of the committee are now denying there was a deadline at all, a deadline aides initially gave.