Republican Rep. Peter King said that while Trump “overreacted” by blaming Obama for wiretapping Trump Tower, there are people in the federal government who “are really committing felonies.” | AP Photo Republicans still won't disavow Trump's wiretapping claim

Many congressional Republicans are not ready to disavow President Donald Trump’s wiretapping claim, even after it was debunked by FBI Director James Comey.

In interviews Tuesday, some GOP lawmakers even continued to defend Trump’s claim, seeking to recast it as a broad reference to all possible surveillance rather than a specific move by former President Barack Obama — the same kind of rhetoric deployed by the White House.


And some are using Trump’s allegation to bolster their case that Trump associates have been the victims of an abusive surveillance regime that has leaked classified information to the news media for political purposes.

Republican Rep. Peter King, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that while Trump “overreacted” by blaming Obama for wiretapping Trump Tower, there are people in the federal government who “are really committing felonies.”

“There have been terrible leaks given to the media that violate federal law,” said the New York congressman. Trump “probably saw [all] of this, heard it and assumed that, for whatever reason, he jumped to the conclusion Obama was behind it.”

Meanwhile, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) acknowledged that the “wiretapping never happened” but said Trump has since made clear he was referring generally to “surveillance.”

Nunes said Trump had raised legitimate questions about whether members of his campaign were being monitored. Nunes and other Republicans have repeatedly pointed to former national security adviser Michael Flynn as evidence Trump associates were being surveilled by the Obama administration.

Flynn’s phone calls with Russia’s ambassador were intercepted by the U.S. government and led to his resignation last month after it became clear he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of those calls. Information about Flynn’s calls was leaked to the news media — an act Republicans have characterized as a grave crime.

“There’s been one crime that’s been committed, and that’s the leaking of someone’s name,” Nunes told reporters.

Democrats say Republicans are drawing the wrong lessons from Monday’s marathon House Intelligence Committee hearing, in which Comey shot down Trump’s wiretapping allegation and confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

“I scratch my head again with [Trump’s] false claims against President Obama,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “There is an old saying: When you want to try to get out of a hole, stop digging.”

Trump triggered the wiretapping controversy with a series of tweets on March 4, writing that he “just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.” He likened Obama’s actions to “McCarthyism” and called his predecessor a “bad [or sick] guy.”

Trump’s claim sent ripples through Washington, as it suggested Obama had committed a shocking abuse of power by setting up a makeshift spying operation against a political rival.

But Comey on Monday rejected Trump’s allegation that Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower, saying the FBI and Justice Department have “no information that supports those tweets.”

Comey confirmed that the FBI opened an investigation in July into Russia’s election meddling, including possible coordination with the Trump campaign. This raises the prospect that there could have been surveillance of Trump associates — but Comey explained during the hearing that no single individual can unilaterally order a wiretap, not even a president.

“It has to go through an application process. Ask a judge; the judge can then make the order,” Comey said.

Following his testimony, several Democrats called on Trump to apologize to Obama, including Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff also said Trump owed an apology to the American people “for leading us down this wild goose chase.”

Trump’s top two GOP critics in the Senate, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said they hoped Comey’s testimony would put Trump’s allegation to rest. McCain would not go so far as to demand Trump apologize, but he called on the White House to issue a clarification.

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“It would be helpful,” McCain said Tuesday, “if the White House stated that the president had misspoken when he made that allegation, and hopefully we can put this behind us and concentrate on not only what Russia tried to do in this election but what Russia is doing in places like France right now.”

Other Republicans, though, declined to denounce Trump’s claim. Instead, they sought to reframe it to help bolster their argument against leaks.

Rep. Mike Conaway, for instance, excused the president for accusing his predecessor of abusing his powers by saying Trump was “not someone who’s spent a lot of his career talking about intelligence issues and police investigations, those kinds of things.”

“I suspect the word wiretap covered a broad range. Those of us who have had some experience, that background, understand that that’s a relatively discrete term,” said the Texas Republican. “I don’t know which one he used. Again, I suspect it’s the broader term as opposed to just the hard-wiring or the actual tapping of a specific phone.”

Conaway said whether there was surveillance of the Trump campaign is “a question still to be answered, and I’ll trust the FBI to fully explore everything that’s out there.”

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said there was not enough information yet to reach a “final conclusion” on whether Trump’s wiretapping claim is false.

“I’ve always believed you ought to wait until you know all the evidence before you reach a conclusion,” Cornyn said Tuesday on MSNBC. “So I’m not ready to reach conclusions before the evidence is complete. That’s all I’m saying.”

Added Nunes: “That issue is not over with yet until we get all the information.”

