Category: Obama Wiretap

FBI Monitored Former Trump Campaign Adviser Carter Page on Russia

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The FBI obtained a warrant to monitor President Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser, Carter Page, last summer on suspicions he knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, The Washington Post is reporting.

The FBI and Justice Department obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to monitor the communications of Page, who has called himself a junior member of Trump’s foreign policy advisory team, as part of their investigation into possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia, the newspaper says, citing unnamed law enforcement and other US officials.

The FBI and Justice Department obtained the warrant after convincing a FISA judge there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign government (Russia), the report says. The warrant presents the strongest information to date that the FBI had reason to believe a Trump adviser was in touch with Moscow and met with foreign operatives during Trump’s presidential campaign.

FBI Director James Comey has acknowledged that an investigation was opened last year into Russia’s efforts to influence the election and the question of whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin. But Comey stopped short of naming anyone working for the campaign who may have been involved.

CNN is working to confirm The Washington Post’s story.

Page, however, called the FISA warrant “unjustified” in a statement to CNN’s Manu Raju.

“There have been various reports [about FISA documents and FBI surveillance of him],” Page said. “But I was so happy to hear that further confirmation is now being revealed. It shows how low the Clinton/Obama regime went to destroy our democracy and suppress dissidents who did not fully support their failed foreign policy. It will be interesting to see what comes out when the unjustified basis for those FISA requests are more fully disclosed over time, including potentially the Dodgy Dossier — a document that clearly is false evidence, which could represent yet another potential crime.”

Page was referring to a leaked dossier of unverified information compiled by a former British intelligence official for Trump’s political opponents. Then-President-elect Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier before Trump’s inauguration, CNN reported.

When asked in March of last year to list members of his foreign policy team in an interview with The Washington Post, Trump included “Carter Page, PhD.”

Page has said he sent policy memos to the campaign and participated in conference calls as well as gatherings that included Trump, but also said he never personally briefed Trump or was in “small meetings” with him during the election. But Trump said at a White House news conference in February that he doesn’t think he ever met Page.

“I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him,” Trump said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met him. And he actually said he was a very low-level member of I think a committee for a short period of time. I don’t think I ever met him. Now, it’s possible that I walked into a room and he was sitting there, but I don’t think I ever met him.”

Page told CNN he had never shaken Trump’s hand and that by saying he had met with Trump, he had meant meetings in the “Russian sense,” which he said meant he had attended rallies Trump spoke at.

In recent interviews, Page described himself as a “junior member” of Trump’s foreign policy team, and has denied working on any Russia-related policies for the campaign. He also said in February that he is still in contact with some people in the Trump orbit.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

A lot of right-wing news media and Carter Page himself have declared this revelation to be some sort of vindication, that finally there is some proof that Obama wiretapped Donald Trump at Trump Tower during the election.

But first, this is none of those things.

And most importantly, Page should not be excited over this news because you don’t get slapped with a FISA warrant unless the court thinks you could be the agent of a foreign power. U.S. officials convinced a FISA court judge during the presidential campaign that there is probable cause that Page was “knowingly” working as an agent of a foreign government while advising Trump.

Classified Docs Contradict Nunes Surveillance Claims, GOP and Dem Sources Say

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After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.

Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump’s allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the “unmasking” of US individuals’ identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a “massive story.”

However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as “normal and appropriate” for officials who serve in that role to the president.

And another source said there’s “absolutely” no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents.

Still, some members of Congress continue to have concerns about the justification given for the unmasking requests and the standards for the intelligence community to grant such requests, which reveal the private data of US persons mentioned in intelligence reports based on routine intelligence collection aimed at foreign nationals.

Such collection regularly targets officials and nationals from Russia, Taiwan, Israel and other countries.

The lawmakers’ assessment comes after Trump, in a New York Times interview last week, accused Rice of breaking the law.

Trump has not revealed which intelligence reports he is relying on to make his charge that Rice may have acted illegally.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Trump said. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world.” He also called it “truly one of the big stories of our time.”

Asked by the Times if he believed Rice’s actions were criminal Trump responded, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”

Sebastian Gorka, a Trump foreign policy aide, cast Rice’s actions as worse than the Watergate scandal that felled President Richard Nixon in an interview with pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“Losing 14 minutes of audiotape in comparison to this is a little spat in the sandbox in the kindergarten,” Gorka said.

Rice defended her actions last week on MSNBC, saying her requests were “absolutely not for any political purposes, to spy, or anything.”

“There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a US person was referred to — name not provided, just a US person — and sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report, and assess its significance, it was necessary to find out, or request the information as to who the US official was,” Rice said.

“The notion that some people are trying to suggest, is that by asking for the identity of a person is leaking it, is unequivocally false,” she said. “There is no connection between unmasking and leaking.”

Rice is among the list of witnesses that House and Senate Intelligence officials want to interview as part of its probe into Russian attempts to meddle with the US elections.

House Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence Committee are near agreement on the list of witnesses to interview, with the GOP mostly focusing on people who may have leaked classified information and the Democrats hoping to question Trump associates who may have ties to Russia.

But the House review has been thrown into turmoil after Nunes last month expressed alarm about the unmasking of US persons, including Trump advisors, caught up in incidental collection. He reviewed the documents on White House grounds with the help of White House officials, despite House Speaker Paul Ryan saying Nunes informed him that the information came from a “whistleblower.”

Critics said Nunes appeared to be giving political cover to Trump in the aftermath of the president’s unsubstantiated tweet last month that Obama ordered wiretaps of Trump Tower to spy on him during the campaign.

Nunes’ office has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.

Nunes last week abruptly recused himself temporarily from the Russia investigation as the House Ethics Committee announced it is investigating whether he revealed classified materials, but he is still serving as chairman of the panel.

(h/t CNN)

Trump, Citing No Evidence, Suggests Susan Rice Committed Crime

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President Trump said on Wednesday that he thought that the former national security adviser Susan E. Rice may have committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates who were swept up in the surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies and that other Obama administration officials may also have been involved.

The president provided no evidence to back his claim. Current and former intelligence officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations have said that nothing they have seen led them to believe that Ms. Rice’s actions were unusual or unlawful. When Americans are swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by intelligence agencies, their identities are supposed to be obscured, but they can be revealed for national security reasons, and intelligence officials say it is a regular occurrence.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in the Oval Office. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”

He declined to say if he had personally reviewed new intelligence to bolster his claim but pledged to explain himself “at the right time.”

When asked if Ms. Rice, who has denied leaking the names of Trump associates under surveillance by United States intelligence agencies, had committed a crime, the president said, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”

Ms. Rice has denied any impropriety. In an interview on Tuesday with MSNBC, she said: “The allegation is that somehow the Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That’s absolutely false.”

Mr. Trump’s comment broke with normal presidential conventions. Presidents traditionally refrain from suggesting that anyone is guilty or innocent of a crime out of concern for prejudicing any potential prosecution or legal proceedings. When they have violated that unwritten rule, defense lawyers have sometimes used a president’s comments to undercut prosecutions.

Mr. Trump did not make clear what crime he was accusing Ms. Rice of committing. It is legal for a national security adviser to request the identities of Americans mentioned in intelligence reports provided to them, and former national security officials said any request Ms. Rice may have made would have been subject to approval by the intelligence agencies responsible for the report.

Leaking classified information could be a crime but no evidence has surfaced publicly indicating that Ms. Rice did that and she flatly denied doing so in the interview with MSNBC. “I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have and never would,” she said.

Mr. Trump criticized media outlets, including The New York Times, for failing to adequately cover the Rice controversy — while singling out Fox News and the host Bill O’Reilly for praise, despite a Times report of several women who have accused Mr. O’Reilly of harassment. The president then went on to defend Mr. O’Reilly, who has hosted him frequently over the years.

“I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person,” said Mr. Trump, who during the interview was surrounded at his desk by a half-dozen of his highest-ranking aides, including the economic adviser Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, along with Vice President Mike Pence.

“I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled,” said Mr. Trump. “Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

Mr. Trump described the chemical attack in Syria as a “horrible thing” and “a disgrace.”

“I think it’s an affront to humanity,” he said, adding it was “inconceivable that somebody could do that, those kids were so beautiful, to look at those, the scenes of those beautiful children being carried out.”

Asked about what it meant for Russia’s role in terms of Syria, Mr. Trump said, “I think it’s a very sad day for Russia because they’re aligned, and in this case, all information points to Syria that they did this. Why they did this, who knows? That’s a level first of all they weren’t supposed to have this.”

Mr. Trump again pointed to President Barack Obama for drawing “the red line in the sand, and it was immediately violated, and it did nothing,” and he suggested reporters won’t focus on it.

The president declined to say whether he would speak personally to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Claims Wiretap Tweet ‘Is Turning Out to Be True’

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President Donald Trump claimed in an interview Sunday that his unsubstantiated allegation that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower “is turning out to be true.”

Trump launched the explosive claim in a string of March 4 tweets, alleging without evidence that Obama “had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.” And although no officials have confirmed the veracity of his claims on the record, the president has no regrets.

“I don’t regret anything, because there is nothing you can do about it,” he told Financial Times in an interview published Sunday. “You know if you issue hundreds of tweets, and every once in a while you have a clinker, that’s not so bad.”

Trump said his infamous tweet — “the one about being in quotes wire tapped, meaning surveilled” — “is turning out to be true.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

To date there is still no evidence to back up Donald Trump’s claim that he was surveilled before the election.

Trump Sunday Morning Tweet Promises ‘Love and Strength’ of GOP Will Eventually Take Away Obamacare

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President Donald Trump was off and running on Twitter Sunday morning, once again attacking the media for saying his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is “dead.”

Ten days after House Majority leader Paul Ryan (R-WI) pulled his Trumpcare bill in the face of certain defeat and Trump administration officials said the president was moving on to budget and tax matters, Trump declared on Sunday that he still intends to get rid on Obamacare.

The president then asserted the real story the press should be covering is “surveillance and leaking.”

“Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party!” Trump tweeted before adding, “Talks on Repealing and Replacing ObamaCare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck.”

Trump’s mention of “love and strength in the R party” strikes a conciliatory tone from his recent Twitter attacks on the hard right Republican Freedom Caucus that torpedoed Trumpcare.

On Saturday, Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino called for the defeat of Freedom Caucus Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) to be defeated at the polls.

You can see Trump’s Sunday tweets below:

(h/t Raw Story)

Trump Tells NBC to Stop Covering Russia Story

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President Trump on Saturday called for NBC News to devote more attention to his unproven claims that President Obama spied on him and stop covering the investigations into Russia’s interference in the election.

“When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and @NBCNews start talking about the Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia story?” Trump tweeted just before 9 a.m.

“It is the same Fake News Media that said there is ‘no path to victory for Trump’ that is now pushing the phony Russia story. A total scam!” he added shortly after.

It was not immediately apparent what NBC coverage Trump was taking issue with. Chuck Todd on Friday interviewed top Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell and former Obama press secretary Josh Earnest on “MTP Daily” about the latest Russia developments.

Russian interference in last year’s election is the subject of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee, House Intelligence Committee and the FBI.

Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn has volunteered to be interviewed by the FBI and congressional committees probing possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

The president has frequently decried coverage of the investigations into Russian meddling as “fake news.”

Trump last month claimed in a series of tweets that Obama “wiretapped” him before the election. He did not supply any evidence.

FBI Director James Comey says he knows of “no information” validating Trump’s accusation. Trump has stood by the allegations, and the White House has said the comment refers to the Obama administration’s surveillance activities more broadly.

(h/t The Hill)

 

 

Devin Nunes’s Wiretapping Claims Came From the Trump White House

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One of the biggest mysteries in the strange case of Rep. Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee chair who’s trying — and failing — to substantiate President Trump’s wiretapping claims, may have just have been solved.

In a bombshell report Thursday, the New York Times named the sources who provided Nunes with classified intelligence reports purportedly validating some of Trump’s wiretapping claims — and both of them are Trump administration political appointees working directly in the White House complex.

That means Nunes — the lawmaker charged with leading an investigation into the administration’s unfounded wiretapping allegations — used information he received from the Trump White House itself to publicly try to deflect blame from Trump. It also means Nunes was misleading the American public when he said his sources were whistleblowers, and that he went to the White House compound because it was the only secure place to review classified information. (This is not true: Capitol Hill has secure facilities for just this reason.)

Instead, we now know Nunes’s sources, and they’re far from disinterested parties. They are Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, and Michael Ellis, a White House counsel attorney who, prior to the Trump administration, worked for Nunes. Cohen-Watnick uncovered the raw intelligence, according to the Times, and Ellis briefed Nunes on it directly.

The Times story, sourced to “current American officials,” also reveals new information about the substance of the calls that Nunes was briefed on. According to the newspaper, the intelligence reports were intercepts of foreign officials’ conversations about the Trump team, not taps on Trump or his associates’ phones (it’s standard practice for US intelligence to spy on high-ranking foreigners).

“Officials said the reports consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were trying to develop contacts within Mr. Trump’s family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration,” the Times’s Matthew Rosenberg, Maggie Haberman, and Adam Goldman write.

Put more bluntly: Members of the Trump White House selectively leaked classified intelligence that doesn’t actually support their boss’s claim to a credulous congressman who uncritically parroted the information in a press conference just hours later.

Oh, and one more thing: Nunes is supposed to be leading the House’s investigation into the Trump team’s ties with Russia. Even prior to this new report, he faced growing calls both to recuse himself from the investigation and to step down from his post as head of House Intelligence. House Speaker Paul Ryan had been standing by Nunes, which means Nunes may still be the one seeing the investigation through to the end. If he does, though, one thing seems certain: It will now be extremely hard to take any of his findings seriously.

The series of events here is deeply bizarre

The precise chain of events leading up to the March 22 presser, where Nunes told the public about the information he got, is worth unpacking — as it tells us something fundamentally disturbing about the whole saga.

It begins with Cohen-Watnick, who is — per a blockbuster Politico report — a rather controversial figure. He’s a 30-year-old Trump loyalist who developed a close relationship with Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner during the presidential transition. He was appointed to run the NSC’s intelligence staff by Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn (who was later fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the US).

On March 4, Trump alleged — without providing any evidence — that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. “Shortly thereafter,” the Times reporters write, “Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.”

The clear implication of this Times claim is that Cohen-Watnick was looking for anything that could vindicate Trump’s wiretap claim.

About a week later, new National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster tried to get rid of Cohen-Watnick, whom the CIA reportedly didn’t trust because it saw him as hostile to them as an institution. On March 10, McMaster informed Cohen-Watnick that he would be moved to a different position in the NSC. On March 12, Trump personally intervened (reportedly at Bannon and Kushner’s prompting), overruling McMaster and keeping Cohen-Watnick in place.

Sometime during all of this, Cohen-Watnick found the intelligence intercepts that mention Trump officials. What happened between that unspecified date and the night of March 21 isn’t exactly clear. Ellis, the White House lawyer who used to work for Nunes, somehow got looped in and wound up briefing Nunes when the lawmaker got to the White House grounds.

What’s obvious is that Nunes was never particularly clear about what he had in his public comments, even after Ellis’s briefing. Initially, he said the surveillance contained intercepts of the president’s calls, and then backtracked and said it was possible. This was never confirmed; the most recent reports suggest Nunes isn’t even sure if any White House officials at all were taped in his intercepts.

All we know is that White House officials were mentioned by the parties on the call, who appear to be mostly foreign dignitaries discussing plans for getting access to the top people on the Trump team.

So, to recap.

A young White House official who owes his job to Trump personally begins sifting through wiretaps right after the president claims he was wiretapped. What he finds makes it into the hands of an attorney who used to work for the chair of the House panel investigating the Trump White House’s wiretapping allegations.

This attorney briefs his former boss on what he learned, but leaves him with such a garbled understanding of it that it seems like the wiretaps might vindicate Trump’s claim that Obama spied on him — even though they clearly didn’t. When the congressman goes public with the information, he omits the fact that he got the information from the White House.

And that’s only what’s come to light so far.

(h/t Vox)

Trump Accuses Clinton Campaign of Russia Ties

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President Trump on Monday questioned the Clinton campaign’s alleged Russia ties less than an hour before the House Intelligence Committee held its first public hearing on the Kremlin’s involvement in the 2016 election.

“What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Also, is it true that the DNC would not let the FBI in to look?” Trump said in a Monday morning tweet.

FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers were testifying on the issue Monday morning on Capitol Hill. They were also to be asked about allegations Trump made that President Obama tapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

With Trump’s latest tweet, it appears he’s hoping to influence what questions the witnesses will be asked at the briefing, as he tries to turn attention away from his campaign toward his vanquished rival, Hillary Clinton.

In other tweets Monday, Trump denied that he colluded with Russia during the presidential election — calling the allegations “made up” by Democrats and “FAKE NEWS.”

“James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!” Trump said in a tweet, referring to statements made two weeks ago by the former director of national intelligence during the Obama years.

He added, “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!”

The former top spy told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 5, “We had no evidence of such collusion.”

On Sunday, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), claimed, contrary to Clapper, that there is evidence of collusion.

“I was surprised to see Director Clapper say that because I don’t think you can make that claim categorically as he did. I would characterize it this way at the outset of the investigation: There is circumstantial evidence of collusion. There is direct evidence, I think, of deception and that’s where we begin the investigation,” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There is certainly enough for us to conduct an investigation,” he added.

(h/t New York Post)

Reality

An article in Breitbart News, the online news organization that has been run by Steven Bannon, before he became one of Trump’s top advisers, claims that mainstream media are ignoring damning evidence that Clinton benefitted from Russian involvement and are too focused on a “so-called scandal” surrounding the Trump administration.

An article dated March 4 listed five “bombshells” deals linking Clinton and Russia. Here’s one:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman’s Joule energy company bagged $35 million from Putin’s Rusnano.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta sat on the executive board of an energy company, Joule Unlimited, which received millions from a Putin-connected Russian government fund.

Given the close ties between what Trump tweets and conservative media reports, it’s likely that story is the root of his tweet. But there’s been no formal evidence offered of ties between Clinton and the Russians.

Trump’s official POTUS Twitter Account Completely Misrepresented the FBI Director’s Testimony on Russia

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Donald Trump (more likely, his staff) spent the morning live tweeting the Russia hearing from the official @POTUS Twitter account, including videos with misleading captions seemingly designed to shift blame off him and his administration.

“FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia,” the president tweeted.

The tweet implies Obama was the source of the Flynn leak. But Comey repeatedly told legislators in the hearing that he would not be able to comment on specific investigations and warned them not to read into his refusal to confirm or deny certain questions.

“Our ability to share details with the Congress and the American people is limited when those investigations are still open, which I hope makes sense,” Comey said. “We need to protect people’s privacy. We need to make sure we don’t give other people clues as to where we’re going. We need to make sure that we don’t give information to our foreign adversaries about what we know or don’t know.”

The president’s account also tweeted a similarly misleading caption and video combination featuring National Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers. He was responding to questions from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes about the NSA’s knowledge of Russian tampering in specific state vote tallies.

Rogers also offered this caveat: “I would highlight we are a foreign intelligence organization, not a domestic intelligence organization.”

The president seems unable to stop himself from composing tweets a reasonable person would understand to be false. The line of questioning occurred at all because Trump sent a series of tweets accusing President Obama of wiretapping his office at Trump Tower, an allegation the DOJ, FBI and NSA have all denied.

(h/t Vice News)

 

 

US Will ‘Not Repeat’ Claims GCHQ Wiretapped Donald Trump

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The US has agreed not to repeat claims the UK’s communications intelligence agency wiretapped Donald Trump during the presidential election campaign.

GCHQ rejected allegations made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, that it spied on Mr Trump, as “nonsense”.

No. 10 has been assured by Mr Spicer he would not repeat the claims, which he cited from US TV channel Fox News.

The White House has said that Mr Spicer was “simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story”.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said it had been made clear to US authorities the claims were “ridiculous and should have been ignored”.

Former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said it was not enough to promise not to repeat the allegation.

“That’s not the same as saying it was rubbish in the first place,” he told the BBC.

GCHQ rejected the allegations as “utterly ridiculous”. The unusual move by the agency to comment on the news came after Mr Spicer cited claims first made on Fox News earlier this week.

Mr Trump said Trump Tower in New York was under surveillance, but has provided no evidence for the claim.

The allegations of GCHQ involvement were initially made by former judge Andrew Napolitano.

Mr Spicer quoted Mr Napolitano as saying: “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command.”

He said Mr Obama “didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ.

“What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database.”

A GCHQ spokesman said: “Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense.

“They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”

It’s a bad day for the transatlantic intelligence community when Britain’s largest and best funded spy agency – GCHQ – has to come out and publicly contradict a claim made by its closest ally.

GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 rarely, if ever, comment on ongoing intelligence stories in the news.

But the allegation made by Mr Spicer was seen as so potentially damaging – as well as being untrue – that it was decided to make an exception.

The BBC understands that a discussion was held earlier this week in No 10 on whether and how to respond.

When Mr Spicer repeated his claim of GCHQ collusion on Thursday the strongly-worded denial was written and published.

Career intelligence officers on both sides of the Atlantic will now be at pains to protect their historically-close relationship from any further perceived gaffes coming out of the White House.

(h/t BBC News)

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