President Donald Trump's accusation
that his predecessor ordered his phones to be tapped is "simply false",
Barack Obama's spokesman has said.
Kevin Lewis said that "neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen".
Mr
Trump had tweeted: "Terrible! Just found out Obama had my "wires
tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is
McCarthyism!"
Read the tweet below as was shared by Trump....
He gave no details to back the claim.
In his
statement, Mr Lewis said 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".
The statement left open the possibility that a judicial investigation was taking place.
Earlier Ben Rhodes, who was Mr Obama's foreign policy adviser and speechwriter, also addressed Mr Trump's claims in a tweet, saying: "No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you."
Mr Trump, who is at his Florida resort, fired off a series of tweets from just after 06:30 local time (11:30 GMT) on Saturday.
He
called the alleged tapping "a new low" and said "This is
Nixon/Watergate" - referring to the most notorious political scandal of
1972, which led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon after a web
of political spying, sabotage and bribery was exposed by the media.
McCarthyism,
which Mr Trump referred to in one of the first posts, relates to the
persecution for US Communists and their allies led by Senator Joe
McCarthy in the 1950s.
Source...BBC
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