Wiretapping And White House Credibility

A congressional deadline for President Trump’s Justice Department to produce evidence of wiretapping by President Obama has arrived. What do we know?

The House Intelligence Committee deadline for the Justice Department to produce evidence backing up President Trump’s allegation that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower came and went yesterday. No evidence. The Justice Department asked for more time. There is no precedent for the sitting president’s accusation that his predecessor, Barack Obama, tapped him during the campaign.

Peter Nicholas, White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. (@PeterWSJ)

Thomas Mann, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

The Atlantic: Why Trump Is Accusing Obama of Wiretapping — "Why, last Saturday, did President Trump accuse former President Obama of wiretapping him? In its story tracing the accusation from Mark Levin’s radio show to Breitbart’s front page to Trump’s Twitter Feed, The New York Times offered a theory: Trump wanted to distract the press from bad news."

POLITICO: Trump's spying fixation gives surveillance critics unexpected boon— "A flurry of leaks, President Donald Trump's unproven wiretapping allegations and WikiLeaks' disclosure of CIA hacking tools are breathing new life into civil libertarians' hopes of reining in the government's spying powers when they come due for congressional renewal this year."

Bloomberg: Lawmakers Say They Expect Facts to Emerge Soon on Trump Wiretap Claim— "Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Sunday said they still haven’t seen evidence to support President Donald Trump’s unverified claim that his predecessor tapped his phones, but they expect the facts will soon emerge."