{Justice department says more time needed to respond to lawmakers about President Trump’s claim Obama wiretapped him.}<\/p>\n
The Department of Justice has requested more time to respond to a request from lawmakers on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee for evidence about President Donald Trump’s allegation that then-president Barack Obama wiretapped him.<\/p>\n
The department had been expected to provide a response by Monday to the House Intelligence Committee, which has made Trump’s wiretapping claims part of a bigger investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n
But spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement that the department has asked for more time to “review the request in compliance with the governing legal authorities and to determine what if any responsive documents may exist”.<\/p>\n
The committee replied in a statement that it wanted a response by the time of a planned hearing on March 20.<\/p>\n
“If the committee does not receive a response by then, the committee will ask for this information during the March 20 hearing and may resort to a compulsory process if our questions continue to go unanswered,” a spokesman said.<\/p>\n
The justice department is not required to respond to the representatives\u2019 request for evidence or meet its deadline.<\/p>\n
{{Not ‘literally’ wiretapping}}<\/p>\n
Trump tweeted earlier this month that Obama had ordered him to be wiretapped. He presented no evidence, and the former intelligence director said last week that the claim was false.<\/p>\n
The White House on Monday appeared to soften Trump’s claim.<\/p>\n
Spokesman Sean Spicer said the president was not using the word wiretapping literally, noting that Trump had put the term in quotation marks – which he did only in his first tweet.<\/p>\n
“The president used the word wiretap in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities,” Spicer said.<\/p>\n
He also suggested Trump was not accusing Obama specifically, but instead referring to the actions of his administration.<\/p>\n
Trump himself has not commented on the matter since his March 4 tweets.<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Justice department says more time needed to respond to lawmakers about President Trump’s claim Obama wiretapped him.} The Department of Justice has requested more time to respond to a request from lawmakers on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee for evidence about President Donald Trump’s allegation that then-president Barack Obama wiretapped him. The department had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-33185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33185"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=33185"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=33185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}