President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters in the run-up to last fall’s election, providing no evidence to support his explosive claim and drawing a flat denial from Obama’s office. Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement: “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. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Ben Rhodes, a longtime national security adviser to Obama, tweeted at Trump: “No President can order a wiretap. White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, center, walks offstage with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, right, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 23, 2017.

Source: Washington Post March 05, 2017 00:47 UTC