WASHINGTON — The White House continues to change its answer as to what Donald Trump meant when he said Barack Obama ordered the surveillance of Trump Tower shortly before he won the election.
Last week, it was “wiretapping. On Monday, it was “broad surveillance.” And on Thursday, Sean Spicer introduced another phrase — communications at Trump Tower were “being swept up.”
(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Daily Caller asked the press secretary to clarify what type of surveillance Trump believes happened.
“He was very clear about this last night,” Spicer said of the president’s interview with Tucker Carlson that aired Wednesday. “He said he meant it. He put it in quotes. It was very broad. That’s what he meant by the use of the term. It was surveillance. I think we’ve covered this like 10 times.”
When pressed for specifics, Spicer said, “That’s the point of them [the Senate and House intelligence committees] looking into this.”
In his interview with Carlson, Trump pointed out that he put wiretapping in quotation marks when he first made the accusations.
“Don’t forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes,” Trump said. “That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes.”
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Though the president said there would be some “very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks,” on Thursday, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said there was “no evidence” that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance.
“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,” Sen. Richard Burr and Sen. Mark Warner said in a joint statement. (RELATED: Trump Says He Found Out He Was Being ‘Wiretapped’ After Reading New York Times Article)