Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, quoted a Fox News report which alleged President Obama used GCHQ to spy on Donald Trump when he was a candidate JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERSGCHQ hit back furiously at the White House after it repeated unsubstantiated claims that the intelligence agency had helped Barack Obama to spy on Donald Trump. In a rare public statement, a spokesman for the British agency dismissed the wiretapping allegations as “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous”. Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, had quoted from a string of reports to support President Trump’s claims that Mr Obama had tapped his phones when he was president-elect. During a tense news briefing Mr Spicer repeated claims from a Fox News report which alleged that Mr Obama had used GCHQ so that “there’s no American fingerprints on this”. He quoted Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox’s senior judicial analyst: “He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he…

Source: The Times March 17, 2017 00:10 UTC