Spicer struggles to defuse Trump wiretapping controversy

The controversy over President Donald Trump’s explosive claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower phones during the 2016 campaign appears to be spinning out of the White House’s control.

On Thursday, press secretary Sean Spicer further fanned the flames.


Shortly after the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a statement saying there is no evidence of Trump’s accusation — a rare rebuke and the second such comment in so many days — Spicer repeatedly refused to answer questions about the White House’s reaction during the daily news briefing.

Instead, Spicer accused reporters of cherry-picking facts, and himself cherry-picked passages from a series of articles during a nearly eight-minute soliloquy and selectively highlighted comments from the Republican leaders who have cast doubt on Trump’s accusation.

“And I think the president's been very clear when he talked about this, and he talked about it last night. When he talked about wiretapping, he meant surveillance and that there have been incidents that have occurred,” Spicer said. “Devin Nunes couldn't have stated it more beautifully, but you choose not to cover that part. You chose not to cover when Tom Cotton went out, when Richard Burr went out, Chairman Nunes and others.”

Nunes and Burr are the Republican chairmen on the House and Senate intelligence committees, respectively, and Spicer was referring to their past assertions that they had not seen evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. He suggested that reporters did not accept those assertions about a lack of evidence but were quick to accept the lack of evidence for Trump’s claims.

Yet while significant amounts of reporting from multiple outlets have raised the prospect that Trump associates communicated with Russians during the campaign, there is no such reporting to back up Trump’s central claim: that Obama ordered a wiretap of his phone. Spicer, however, sought to make the case Thursday that such reporting does exist.

Spicer quoted a number of reports that the Obama administration had requested a FISA warrant to investigate connections between Russia and Trump associates. He did not cite reports stating Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trump’s phone.

“He stands by it,” Spicer said of Trump’s accusation. He claimed reporters were “mischaracterizing” the senators’ statement Thursday.

The joint statement from Burr and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said: “Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.”

Spicer and the White House have expressed increasing frustration over the news media’s continued questions about the accusation, but they have provided no evidence to clear up the confusion surrounding the president’s accusation — in turn leading to more questions.

But Spicer on Thursday did little to defuse the controversy or clear up confusion: He launched attacks on the press and delivered pugnacious answers — “That’s cute,” he told CNN’s Jim Acosta in response to one question, after earlier telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl to “calm down.” He declined to call on New York Times’ chief White House correspondent Peter Baker even when another reporter gave up her question so Baker could have a chance.

When a reporter noted that a number of the articles Spicer read from had anonymous sources — a practice the White House has slammed — Spicer again lashed out, accusing the media of a double standard.

When CNN’s Acosta raised that connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia had been “looked at,” Spicer again went on the offensive.

“How do you know all this? How do you seem to be such an expert in this?” Spicer asked. “How do you know it's been looked at? Hold on. I'm sorry. Can you tell me how you know that all of this has, quote, been looked at?”

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Spicer repeated time and again that the president had been “clear” in his accusation, eventually prompting a reporter to respond: “No he wasn’t.”

“Yes he was,” Spicer replied.

Spicer was emphatic that the president still stands by his allegation and that he believes the president will be vindicated.

“The bottom line is the president said last night that he will be providing, there would be additional information coming forward,” he said. “There is a ton of media reports out there that indicate that something was going on during the 2016 election.”

But he demurred on whether the president would apologize for his accusation if it was disproved.

Madeline Conway contributed to this report.

