Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey has reportedly asked the Justice Department to publicly reject Donald Trump’s claim that Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of his phones.
According to senior American officials close to Mr Comey, he has called on the department to publicly state that the political charged claims were false and must be corrected.
Mr Trump tweeted that Mr Obama had ordered FBI agents to monitor communications coming in and out of Trump Tower in October calling it “McCarthyism”.
He gave no evidence to support his claim but a report by alt-right website Breitbart made the same claim on Friday – again with no evidence.
On Sunday the White House asked Congress to include the allegations in its investigation into whether Russia interfered in the election.
The Justice Department has yet to issue a formal statement on the matter.
It is currently unclear why Mr Comey has not made the statement himself as the FBI will have the records to know whether Mr Trump’s claims are true, the New York Times reported.
Mr Comey was widely criticised for publicly announcing a renewed investigation into Ms Clinton’s emails days before the presidential election, following the arrest of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner after it was revealed he shared an email with his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
He became the most senior Obama era law enforcement official to retain his position in the Trump administration.
But the most senior politically appointed official in the Justice Department who would be in a position to speak out is Attorney General Jeff Sessions who has recused himslef from oversight of the election investigation after it was revealed he met with the Russian ambassador twice during the election campaign.
Mr Sessions is close to Mr Trump and has spent the weekend with him at his Mar a Lago resort in Florida.
Mr Obama has denied ever ordering the wiretapping of any US citizen and his spokesman Kevin Lewis said a “cardinal rule” of his administration was that “no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice”.
A former Attorney General under George W Bush, Michael Mukasey, suggested that it was possible Trump Tower had been bugged but it would not have been at Mr Obama’s request.
He said it was quite common for the FBI to wiretap people they suspect of acting as a agent for a foreign country.
But the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, flatly denied the existence of an such order to bug Trump during his tenure.
He told NBC’s Meet the Press: “For the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI.
“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate or against his campaign.”
