FBI Director Comey Wants The Justice Depart To Reject President Trump's Wiretapping Claims

New York Times: Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement.

Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.

Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.

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WNU Editor: F.B.I. director James B. Comey certainly knows how to make enemies. Many Democrats blamed him for why Hillary Clinton lost the election .... and now the Republicans are having their turn at accusing him of turning against President Trump. But what I do not understand about his request to the Justice Department to reject President Trump's wiretapping claim is that he does not have to ask them since the FBI has the jurisdiction to request a FISA warrant. If he wants to put the matter to rest .... just make the public denial himself instead of asking the Department of Justice to do it on the FBI's behalf. But waht makes this case even more confusing is that we do know that there were two requests for a FISA warrant on then candidate Trump. One was in June 2016 when the Obama administration filed a request to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers (which was denied), and the second request was in October when the Obama administration submitted a new and narrow request to the FISA court that was focused on a computer server in Trump Tower with suspected of links to Russian banks. That request was approved .... but no evidence was found. Interesting .... those wiretaps continued for a while (probably for national security reasons) .... which in itself is incredibly disturbing because one can now claim that the Obama administration was monitoring an opposing presidential campaign by using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal government and its intelligence services. If I was to hazard a guess .... it is this FISA warrant and the continuation of it (even though no evidence was found) that got President Trump upset Saturday morning. This FISA warrant also contradicts FBI Director Comey's claim that there are no wiretaps on President Trump .... because there clearly was one .... albeit not directly at him. The final nail in the coffin .... we learned before the inauguration that multiple federal agencies were involved in monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties .... a surveillance operation that I can only assume was approved by the FISA court.

More News On Reports That The FBI Director Comey Wants The Justice Depart To Reject President Trump's Wiretapping Claims

FBI Director Comey asked Justice officials to refute Trump’s unproven wiretapping claim -- Washington Post
Trump wiretap charge flummoxes law enforcement officials as FBI head reportedly asks DOJ to reject claim -- FOX news
FBI asked Justice Department to refute Trump's wiretapping claim -- CNN
Donald Trump: White House seeks congressional help on 'wire-tap' claim, FBI disputes it -- ABC News Online