FBI disputes Trump's wiretapping claim
On Sunday, Trump demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Obama had abused the power of federal law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election.
6 March 2017 7:56 PM GMT
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey has asked the US Justice Department to publicly reject President Donald Trump's claim that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered his phones to be tapped last year, senior officials said.
Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Trump levelled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the FBI broke the law, officials told the New York Times on Sunday.
The FBI chief has argued that the claim is false and must be corrected, the officials told the newspaper.
The Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment.
However, the White House showed no indication that it would back down from Trump's claims.
On Sunday, Trump demanded a congressional inquiry into whether Obama had abused the power of federal law enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election.
In his demand for a congressional inquiry, the President, through his Press Secretary Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said: "President Donald Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016."
A spokesman for Obama and his former aides have called the accusation by Trump "completely false", saying that Obama never ordered any wiretapping of a US citizen.
"A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice," Kevin Lewis, Obama's spokesman, said in a statement on Saturday. Speaking on NBC News on Sunday, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. denied that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretap was authorised against Trump or the campaign during his tenure.
"There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign," Clapper said on "Meet the Press", adding that he would "absolutely" have been informed if the FBI had received a FISA warrant against either. In his claims early Saturday morning, Trump tweeted that he "just found out" that Obama had "my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" before the election. Trump compared the alleged action to "McCarthyism."
By Sunday morning, the White House doubled down on Trump's explosive tweet storm and called for the congressional probe.
Americans give positive ratings to Trump's first Congress speech: Poll
A solid majority of Americans, who watched President Donald Trump's televised first speech to Congress, said it was excellent or good, found a latest Gallup poll.
It showed that 34 per cent of the speech watchers found Trump's speech to be excellent and 23 per cent of them said it was good. 25 per cent said the speech was just okay, while only 7 per cent said it was poor and 9 per cent said it was terrible, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
As to the speech's impact on their confidence in Trump's abilities to carry out his duties, 36 per cent said it made them feel more confident, compared to 11 per cent who said it made them feel less confident Over half of the speech watchers, or 53 per cent, said there is no change in their confidence in Trump, the poll discovered. Nielsen television ratings for Trump's speech showed 48 million American viewers tuned in live for the speech, slightly lower than the 52 million viewers for Obama's first speech to joint session of Congress in2009.
There is a partisan gap in the percentage of viewers in terms of their party affiliation.
While 85 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they either watched the speech live or read news reports about it, only 68 per cent of Democrats and Democratic leaners said they did the same thing.
"Therefore, the positive reactions to Trump's address among speech watchers partly indicate Trump was successful in reaching out to and reinforcing his base," Gallup said in a report.
But Trump's efforts to shift Democrats' views in a more positive direction do not appear to have been successful, Gallup found.
A scant 5 per cent of Democrats said they became more confident in Trump after the speech, with 15 per cent saying they were less confident and 80 per cent saying it made no difference. By contrast, six in 10 Republicans said the speech made them more confident, Gallup found.
President Trump delivered his first speech to Congress on Tuesday night.
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