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 between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.
WaPo‘s fact checker ,Glenn Kessler, is a man who surely will want to retire to a quiet, happy place if he survives the Trump Administration. He tried to determine if the White House has any information about wire taps that it didn’t get from media reports, and came up zilch.
There are credible media reports that intelligence agencies — not President Obama — made a FISA request to investigate connections between Russian banks and a server owned by the Trump organization that may or may not have been in Trump Tower. That’s a far cry from Obama tapping Trump’s Trump Tower phones.
A lot of the reporting on right-wing sites is coming from a British reporter named Louise Mensch. Mensch just reported that there is new evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, however, so the righties may have to find a new favorite reporter.
Karen Tumulty writes for WaPo,
Donald Trump’s presidency has veered onto a road with no centerlines or guardrails.
The president’s accusation Saturday that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had tapped his phone “during the very sacred election process†escalated on Sunday into the White House’s call for a congressional investigation of that evidence-free claim.
The audacious tactic was a familiar one for Trump, who has little regard for norms and conventions. When he wants to change a subject, he often does it by touching a match to the dry tinder of a sketchy conspiracy theory.
But the stakes have gotten higher, and the consequences more real and serious, as questions mount over Moscow’s reported attempts to interfere with last year’s presidential election.
It’s my understanding that if Trump has knowledge of classified information on the wiretaps, he could have that information declassified. One suspects he does not.
Remember all those illegal voters gave Hillary Clinton the popular vote majority? Yeah, nobody but Trump does, either.
It was kind of amusing for private citizen Trump to continue to make stupid allegations about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but he’s not a private citizen any more. Some of the senior Republicans need to sit him down and gently explain to him that a president can’t do crap like this.
For submarines and planes in combat there is a tactic of firing off a noisemaker or chaff to throw off a torpedo or missile. That’s what’s up here with the ‘wiretapping’ accusation.
The target is whatever is up between Trump and the Russians. I don’t think even Trump’s surrogates know the truth. I’m sure I don’t, but I’d like to.
There are three possible ways the truth will come out. One a DOJ investigation which could happen since Sessions recused to save his own ass. Two, Congress could do the investigation but the GOP does not want the scandal. Three – the intel community itself could leak the facts to the media if the DOJ and the GOP plug the usual forms of inquiry.
The man is a disaster, but it won’t matter unless there are some congressional losses that come from it. Gerrymandering and new Jim Crow voting laws will play their part on that score, but the Left has to get its act together and quit relitigating the primary. That last part seems to be slowly happening, but it feels like there’s still a long way to go.
I’ve got a bad feeling no senior establishment Republicans will be sitting him down for a gentle explaining, preferring to have the train wreck proceed as proof to mainstream voters that outsiders can’t do that job. We can’t let that happen. Despite this clown, we need to keep the anti-establishment revolution growing.
Bill – things are not proceeding for GOP management as planned. Trump has declining overall poll numbers, but NOT among the GOP base. They were planning to throw Trump under the bus starting late this year if/when poll numbers dropped. The Orlando rally was a move by Trump to throw red meat to the base and it worked. No facts or evidence are affecting Trump’s popularity w/ his base. The republicans in Congress have to protect Trump until his popularity dips. At some point, it may be impossible for GOP members in Congress to distance themselves from Trump and not run the risk of being primaried.
While I am pontificating – and have the rapt attention of the audience (lol)- where we are does not parallel Nazi Germany. In the USA over half the country disapproves of Trump. In Nazi Germany there were people who didn’t like Hitler but half of Germany was never mobilized against him. Two events could reverse this situation and they’d both have to happen as American counterparts. In one day, Hitler’s people executed at least 85 persons decimating the opposition leadership. The second event was the Reichstag fire, an incident of arson which Hitler used to justify martial law.
In two separate incidents since the inauguration, two online friends have spent a night in the hospital because of Trump thugs. At some point I think non-violent protesters will have to arm themselves en-masse with pepper spray because theyare going to be targets of violence any time they are outnumbered. I’d like to be wrong here – and the two incidents be isolated exceptions to what should be demonstrations without bloodshed.
History says your money is safe if you bet on escalating brutality.
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”.
Trump is gambling that his GOP surrogates in Congress will do two things – One, Determine the extent of the investigations which the intelligence agencies refuse to tell Trump. Two – Combine the Russia Congressional whitewash with the ‘investigation’ of Obama wiretapping to give Trump an excuse which found no wiretapping also cleared Trump of involvement of the Russians. There is NO reason whatsoever to COMBINE the two except to conflate a real scandal with a fake scandal.
As is often the case, the orange conman can easily prove his claims, but he won’t/can’t do so. In this case, he could order declassification of the wiretap on Trump Tower – _if_ that wiretap occurred! But he won’t, so I guess it didn’t.
Trump wanted power, but didn’t realize that power removes excuses.
Because Mike “The Dense” Pence is there as a stop-gap, neither Paul “Privatizin’ & Lyin'” Ryan, or Mitch “The Turtle” McConnel are any too worried about their long-dreamed of tax-cuts for the rich, and benefits-cuts for the poor.
They live to comfort the already overly comfortable, and afflict those already long and overly afflicted.
Hey, whaat can I tell you?
Some people get some little bit of joy giving a begger a buck.
And others, get a great deal of joy kicking that begger in their private parts..
It has been said that the Repubs are hanging in there until they get what they want out of Trump legislative wise. However, this doesn’t make sense to me cause if they get rid of Trump, they have Pence as backup and he will go along with what they want and more. So, somebody please explain this to me. Maybe it’s just that they don’t want a scandal because it reflects badly on the whole party???
Granny, I think the R’s are hanging in there because they’re scared to death of their base. So long as Trump remains wildly popular among the R base, any R officeholder who breaks with him is begging to get primaried (if not murdered).
“Trump remains wildly popular among the R base”. These guys were all dropped on their heads at birth; the are just slow on the uptake. Wait till they lose their healthcare.
I think that Pence is in it up to his halo. He’ll fall when Trump does; and the Randroid and the Turtle know this.
Looks like we are in for fun times.
granny,
I’d prefer another 4 years of “No Drama” Obama, instead of “The Lives of the Old and Angry.”
Gulag: Even ol” dubya looks good to me right now.