Congress To Investigate President Trump's Wiretapping Charge

The House Intelligence Committee will investigate potential government surveillance of political campaigns, according to a statement from Rep. Devin Nunes. The announcement came after President Trump alleged on Twitter over the weekend that President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower ahead of the election, a claim for which he provided no evidence.

Nunes, a California Republican on the Intelligence Committee, put out the following statement Sunday: "One of the focus points of the House Intelligence Committee's investigation is the U.S. government's response to actions taken by Russian intelligence agents during the presidential campaign."

He continued: "As such, the Committee will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party’s campaign officials or surrogates, and we will continue to investigate this issue if the evidence warrants it."

An Obama spokesman has denied Trump's charges, as did former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Congressional Democrats sharply criticized Trump's decision to toss out such a fraught accusation over social media.

"You make up something and then you have the press write about it, and then you say, 'everybody's writing about this charge,'" House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union." "It's a tool of an authoritarian, to just have you always be talking about what you want to be talking about."

In an off-camera briefing Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment much further on Trump's accusations, saying the administration wanted to let Congress investigate before making any further statements on the matter.

Pressed if there were any official sources that provided evidence for Trump's claims about Obama's wiretapping, Spicer cited former U.S. Attorney General Gen. Michael Mukasey's statement on ABC's "This Week." However, Mukasey denied that Obama would have been involved in any wiretapping, and his judgment that the surveillance occurred was based on anonymously sourced news stories.

Just a few minutes earlier during Spicer's briefing, the press secretary criticized the media for giving too much credence to anonymous sources.

Spicer would not deny that Trump's evidence for his tweets came from a recently published and speculative Breitbart article, as many have suggested.

He also refused to elaborate on whether or not Trump meant to criticize the FBI in his tweets.

"I'm going to let the tweet speak for itself," he said.

Photo credit: Christine Rondeau