Donald Trump has tweeted a photoshopped image of Barack Obama scaling the walls of Trump Tower with suction cups and holding binoculars.

The image, which was posted without a caption, appeared to be a reference to Mr Trump’s claims that Mr Obama and the FBI illegally spied on him.

Mr Trump tweeted in March 2017: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

In 2018, the president started a conspiracy theory nicknamed “Spygate” that the Obama administration placed a spy in his 2016 presidential campaign in order to help his then rival, Hillary Clinton.

His accusations against the former US president were refuted by Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, who told the Senate in December there was no evidence that the FBI wiretapped Mr Trump’s phone.

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Show all 6 1 /6 All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible." Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Ken Starr Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. AP All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Jay Sekulow Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pam Bondi Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial. AFP/Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pat Cipollone Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Rudy Giuliani While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of. Reuters

The inspector general led a watchdog report into the FBI’s investigation of certain Trump aides and their suspected ties to the Russian government.

His findings concluded there were a number of “basic and fundamental” errors in the investigation but there was no evidence that Mr Obama or the FBI spied on the Trump campaign.

The report also said there was “no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any Confidential Human Sources (CHS) within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign”.

Mr Horowitz testified that the FBI’s probe was flawed and called it a “travesty” as agents “failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure applications for surveillance were “scrupulously accurate”.

Mr Trump repeatedly branded the FBI investigation a “witch hunt” and said it was an attempt to overthrow his government.