WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Saturday accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his phones at Trump Tower the month before the election, leveling the explosive allegation without offering any evidence.
Trump called his predecessor a “bad (or sick) guy” on Twitter as he fired off a series of messages claiming that Obama “had my ‘wires tapped.’” He likened the supposed tapping to “Nixon/Watergate” and “McCarthyism,” although he did not say where he had gotten his information.
A spokesman for Obama said any suggestion that the former president had ordered such surveillance was “simply false.”
During the 2016 campaign, federal authorities began an investigation into links between Trump associates and the Russian government, an issue that continues to dog Trump. His aides declined to clarify Saturday whether the president’s allegations were based on briefings from intelligence or law enforcement officials — which could mean that Trump was revealing previously unknown details about the investigation — or on something else, like a news report.
But a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the president’s chief counsel, was working to secure access to what McGahn believed to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Trump and his associates.
The official offered no evidence to support the notion that such an order exists. It would be a highly unusual breach of the Justice Department’s traditional independence on law enforcement matters for the White House to order it to turn over such an investigative document.
Any request for information from a top White House official about a continuing investigation would be a stunning departure from protocols intended to insulate the FBI from political pressure. It would be even more surprising for the White House to seek information about a case directly involving the president or his advisers, as does the case involving the Russia contacts.
After the White House received heavy criticism for the suggestion that McGahn would breach Justice Department independence, a different administration official said that the earlier statements about his efforts had been overstated. The official said the counsel’s office was looking at whether there was any legal possibility of gleaning information without impeding or interfering with an investigation. The counsel’s office does not know whether an investigation exists, the official said.
Last month, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, came under fire for asking a top FBI official to publicly rebut news reports about contacts between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government.
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the “White House counsel is reviewing what options, if any, are available to us.” McGahn did not respond to a request for comment. He was traveling on Saturday to Florida to join the president at his estate, Mar-a-Lago.
The president’s decision Saturday to lend the power of his office to accusations against his predecessor of politically motivated wiretapping — without offering any proof — was remarkable, even for a leader who has repeatedly shown himself willing to make assertions that are false or based on dubious sources.
It would have been difficult for federal agents, working within the law, to obtain a wiretap order to target Trump’s phone conversations. It would have meant that the Justice Department had gathered sufficient evidence to convince a federal judge that there was probable cause to believe Trump had committed a serious crime or was an agent of a foreign power, depending on whether it was a criminal investigation or a foreign intelligence one.
Former officials pointed to long-standing laws and procedures intended to ensure that presidents cannot wiretap a rival for political purposes.
“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,” said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama. “As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.”
Trump asserted just the opposite in a series of five Twitter messages beginning just minutes before sunrise in Florida, where the president is spending the weekend.
In the first message, the president said he had “just found out” that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” before the election. Trump’s reference to “wires tapped” raised the possibility that he was referring to some other type of electronic surveillance and was using the idea of phone tapping loosely.
The president was adamant in conversations with several people throughout the day Saturday that he believed he was right about the wiretaps, according to three people with direct knowledge of those conversations.
Two people close to Trump said they believed he was referring to a Breitbart News article, which aides said had been passed around among his advisers. Mark Levin, a conservative radio host, had also embraced the theory recently in a push against what right-leaning commentators have been calling the “deep state.”
The Breitbart article, published Friday, claimed that there was a series of “known steps taken by President Barack Obama’s administration in its last months to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and, later, his new administration.” Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, once led Breitbart News.