FBI Director Comey: Justice Dept. has no information that supports Trump’s tweets alleging he was wiretapped by Obama

By Ellen Nakashima, Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett

March 20, 2017

FBI Director James B. Comey on Monday said there is “no information” that supports President Trump’s claims that his predecessor ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the election campaign.

“I have no information that supports those tweets,’’ said Comey, testifying at the House Intelligence Committee’s first public hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI,’’ and agents found nothing to support those claims, he said.

The hearing comes amid the controversy fired up by Trump more than two weeks ago when he tweeted, without providing evidence, that President Barack Obama had ordered his phones tapped at Trump Tower.

Under questioning from the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Comey said no president could order such surveillance. He added that the Justice Department had asked him to also tell the committee that that agency has no such information, either.

Comey also acknowledged the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, and said that probe extends to the nature of any links between Trump campaign associates and the Russian government.

Comey said the investigation is also exploring whether there was any coordination between the campaign and the Kremlin, and “whether any crimes were committed.”

The acknowledgment was an unusual move, given that the FBI’s practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations. “But in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest,” Comey said, “it may be appropriate to do so.”

Comey said he had been authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the wide-ranging probe’s existence.

He spoke at the intelligence committee hearing along with National Security Agency head Michael S. Rogers.

Comey and Rogers predicted Russian intelligence agencies will continue to seek to meddle with U.S. political campaigns, because they view their work in the 2016 presidential race as successful.

“They’ll be back in 2020, they may be back in 2018,’’ Comey said. “One of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful, introducing chaos and discord” into the electoral process.

“It’s possible they’re misreading that as ‘it worked,’ so we’ll come back and hit them again in 2020,” Comey added.

Rogers agreed: “I fully expect they will maintain this level of activity.” And, he said, Moscow is conducting a similar “active measures” campaign in Europe, where France and Germany are holding elections this year.

Trump and the committee’s Republicans seemed most exercised by leaks to the media. Information shared with the press have resulted in a series of stories over the last month and a half about contacts Trump administration officials or close associates had with Russian officials.

One story in particular that apparently upset the Republicans was a Feb. 9 piece by The Washington Post reporting that Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, discussed the subject of sanctions with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in the month before Trump took office. The Post reported that the discussions were monitored under routine, court-approved monitoring of Kislyak’s calls. Flynn, who had denied to Vice President Pence that he had spoken about sanctions, was forced to resign.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) suggested that the leaks were political. He asked Comey if the intelligence community had shared such information with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, or Obama.

Comey, who had acknowledged that in general senior officials, including Lynch, would have access to such information, said he would not comment on his conversations with Obama or Trump.

As the hearing was going on — in an apparent dig at Comey and carrying the suggestion that Obama administration officials were behind the leaks — Trump’s presidential Twitter account tweeted out “FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia.”

Just hours before the start of the hearing, Trump posted a series of tweets claiming Democrats “made up” the allegations of Russian contacts in an attempt to discredit the GOP during the presidential campaign. Trump also urged federal investigators to shift their focus to probe disclosures of classified material.

“The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information,” Trump wrote early Monday. “Must find leaker now!”

Nunes sought an admission from the officials that the leaks were illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court act, the law that governs foreign intelligence-gathering on U.S. soil or of U.S. persons overseas.

“Yes,” Comey answered. “In addition to being a breach of our trust with the FISA court.”

Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) pressed Rogers to clarify under what circumstances it would be legitimate for Americans caught on tape speaking with people under surveillance to have their identities disclosed publicly, and whether leaking those identities would “hurt or help” intelligence collection.

“Hurt,” Rogers noted.

Rogers stressed that the identities of U.S. persons picked up through “incidental collection” – that being the way intelligence officials picked up on Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak – are disclosed only on a “valid, need to know” basis, and usually only when there is a criminal activity or potential threat to the United States at play.

Rogers added that there are a total of 20 people in the NSA he has delegated to make decisions about when someone’s identity can be unmasked.

Comey did confirm that the NSA, CIA, FBI, main Justice Department and others – including personnel in the White House in some situations – could have access to unmasked names of U.S. persons.

But he stressed that only the collecting agency can unmask the identities of people. Others with whom the information is shared “can ask the collectors to unmask,” he said – but can’t do it on their own.

GOP members fretted that the leaks to the media would complicate the effort by lawmakers to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect through U.S. companies general categories of foreign intelligence contained in phone calls, emails and other electronic communications when one end of the communication is overseas.

Comey rejected the suggestion.

“This conversation has nothing to do with 702,” he protested. “702 is about targeting non-U.S. persons overseas. The FBI can apply to collect electronic surveillance in the United States [on individual targets], but it’s a different thing from 702.”

Comey declined to say whether any officials had sought approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor anyone in the Trump campaign, saying he did not want to discuss the workings of the highly secretive court. Individuals familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, have said there was no such request made during the campaign.

The FBI probe combines an investigation into hacking operations by Russian spy agencies with efforts to understand how the Kremlin sought to manipulate public opinion and influence the election’s outcome

In January, the intelligence community released a report concluding that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin wanted to not only undermine the legitimacy of the election process but also harm the campaign of Hillary Clinton and boost Trump’s chances of winning.

Hackers working for Russian spy agencies penetrated the computers of the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016 as well as the email accounts of Democratic officials, intelligence official said in the report. The material was relayed to WikiLeaks, the officials said, and the anti-secrecy group began a series of damaging email releases just before the Democratic National Convention that continued through the fall.