Trump defends claim that Obama wiretapped his phones

President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his explosive and so far unsupported claim that former President Barack Obama ordered an illegal wiretap of Trump Tower.

“Wiretap covers a lot of different things,” he told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in an interview set to air Wednesday night, according to excerpts of the transcript. “I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.”


In early March, Trump took to Twitter to accuse his predecessor of tapping his phone lines, but offered no evidence to back it up, prompting the immediate condemnation of Democrats and some Republicans who demanded that he prove it. Both Obama and his former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, have denied that the claim is true, and the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, also cast doubt on it, saying Wednesday that the committee has not seen any evidence to support it.

Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, seemed to walk back Trump’s comments on Monday, telling reporters that the president does not actually believe Obama personally wiretapped him. Instead, Spicer claimed, Trump’s tweets were alleging more general “surveillance” during the presidential campaign, even though the president had directly accused Obama of directing a wiretap. (The claim that Trump Tower was under any surveillance during the campaign also remains unproven.)

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The transcript Fox released ahead of Carlson’s prime-time program suggests that Trump was making a similar argument — that “wiretap covers a lot of different things” — but it did not include the context surrounding his remarks.

According to the transcript, Trump also repeated his earlier criticism of MSNBC’s reporting on two pages of his 2005 tax returns.

Some people have speculated that Trump may have leaked the returns himself, considering that they showed him paying some $38 million in taxes in 2005. Trump acknowledged that it’s “certainly not an embarrassing tax return at all,” but told Carlson that he has “no idea” how they were made public.

“I have no idea where they got it, but it’s illegal, and they’re not supposed to have it, and it’s not supposed to be leaked,” he said. “And it’s certainly not an embarrassing tax return at all, but it’s an illegal thing they’ve been doing it. They’ve done it before, and I think it’s a disgrace."