There is still “no evidence” to back up President Donald Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the election, leaders on the House Intelligence Committee said in a joint press conference Wednesday.
Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) shared that assessment.
“We don’t have any evidence that that took place,” Nunes said at the start of the presser. “I don’t think there was an actual tap of Trump Tower.”
Schiff followed up, saying the committee has seen “no basis for that whatsoever” and that it “deeply concerns me that the President would make such an accusation without basis.”
Both said they were eagerly anticipating a response from acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, who they asked last week to provide any evidence that may back up Trump’s allegations by March 20.
The President claimed on Twitter that Obama had his “wires tapped” ahead of the November election, even though the President cannot order the FBI to spy on a U.S. citizen without that agency obtaining a warrant to do so.
Nunes, a Trump ally, said last week that reporters shouldn’t always take the President’s comments “literally.”
Schiff and Nunes said they were willing to subpoena the information requested in the letter if Boente does not provide it to them by Monday, when the committee holds its first open hearing on Russian interference in the election.
