J. Scott Applewhite/Reuters
A spokesman for former President Barack Obama said Saturday that President Trump’s claims of his predecessor conducting wiretapping surveillance against him were “simply false.” The spokesman, Kevin Lewis, stressed that “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen.” He went on to explain that “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 comments, which hint that Trump may have been under surveillance as part of a Justice Department investigation, came after Trump took to Twitter to announce that he’d “just found out” Obama had his phones wiretapped ahead of his election victory. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former speechwriter and foreign policy adviser, also dismissed the allegations. “No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you,” Rhodes wrote on Twitter.