No Evidence of Trump Wiretap, House Intel Leaders Say

There’s no evidence U.S. intelligence agencies wiretapped Donald Trump’s campaign as the president claimed on Twitter this month, leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday.

The panel’s Democratic leader, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., urged the president to retract or explain his statement in the wake of that conclusion while Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., suggested Trump may not have meant the statement literally.

If you take the tweets literally, Nunes said “clearly the president was wrong."

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Nunes remains concerned, he said, that intelligence agencies may have incidentally eavesdropped on innocent conversations of then-candidate Trump or his associates as part of an investigation pursuing a foreign intelligence target.

The FBI declined to publicly answer a query from a Senate Judiciary Committee panel about whether there was any law enforcement investigation of the Trump campaign that might have produced such a wiretap, that panel’s leaders said Wednesday.

The FBI pledged to answer that question in a classified hearing, Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said, a move both men criticized at length.

The House Intelligence Committee is investigating Trump’s claim as part of its broader investigation into Russia’s influence operation aimed at undermining confidence in the 2016 election and aiding Trump’s victory.

FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers will testify at the first open hearing in that investigation Monday. Other witnesses will testify at a second hearing March 28, Nunes and Schiff said during a press conference.