Trump continues to defend wiretapping claims
WASHINGTON — President Trump's unraveling claims that his New York offices were wiretapped by the Obama administration continued to shadow him Friday when during a White House meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the president once again defended his surveillance allegations.
"As far as wiretapping by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps,'' Trump said during a joint news conference with the German leader, referencing past disclosures during the Obama administration that Merkel's cellphone had been monitored.
Trump, however, rejected suggestions that the White House also was casting suspicion on Britain's intelligence service for reportedly collaborating with the Obama administration on alleged surveillance of Trump offices.
"We said nothing; all we did was quote a very talented legal mind,'' Trump said, referring to a disputed Fox News account by commentator Andrew Napolitano alleging that President Obama used Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to conduct Trump surveillance.
British officials repudiated the claim after White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Thursday offered the report as possible evidence that such surveillance had taken place.
The GCHQ characterized the claim as "nonsense, while Prime Minister Theresa May, through a spokesman, described it as "ridiculous.''
"We have made clear to the [U.S.] administration that these claims are ridiculous and that they should be ignored and we have received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated," the spokesman said.
Spicer, following Trump's remarks during the brief Friday news conference, was not yielding.
"I don't think we regret anything," Spicer said. "We just reiterated the fact that we were just simply reading media accounts."
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith said on air just after Trump's press conference that the network cannot confirm Napolitano's account and has "no evidence of any kind" that Trump was under surveillance.
Trump's continued defense of the surveillance allegations come after the claims have been strongly discredited by the bipartisan leadership of both the Senate and House intelligence committees earlier this week.
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The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday flatly refuted Trump's claims that his New York offices were wiretapped in advance of the November election.
“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," Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said in a joint statement.
A day earlier, the House Intelligence Committee offered a similar assessment, leaving the White House virtually alone in asserting the surveillance claim.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, confirmed Friday that it has “complied’’ with requests from leaders of the Senate and House intelligence panels to provide information about whether Trump offices were subject to surveillance during the 2016 election.
The department did not disclose what information was provided to the committees. House panel Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., acknowledged the Justice transmission late Friday, saying the department had "fully complied'' with the committee's request. But the chairman said the committee had not received information it had requested from the FBI and CIA "that is necessary to determine whether information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled and leaked.''
Friday's developments came as a House Intelligence Committee hearing loomed Monday, with FBI Director James Comey set to testify about Trump's surveillance claims and the ongoing federal inquiry into communications between Trump associates and Russian officials.
Soon after Trump made his surveillance allegations in a series of tweets March 4, Comey encouraged Justice officials to refute the claims. Justice officials, however, have yet to act on that request.
