U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy of Spartanburg, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News on Monday morning that he has seen no evidence to support President Donald Trump’s assertion that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone lines during the 2016 election.
Gowdy, the former chairman of the committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks, told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer that if those allegations were true there would be “a paper trial” to corroborate the claims. Gowdy said Trump and his administration would have access to that information.
“They are welcome to release it,” Gowdy said.
Gowdy also took issue with inferences that the Department of Justice or FBI were behaving at the behest of political interests.
"I don't think the FBI is the Obama team, and I don't think the men and women who are career prosecutors in DOJ are on any team...,” Gowdy said.
Earlier Monday, White House officials defended President Donald Trump's explosive claim that Barack Obama tapped Trump's telephones during last year's election, although they won't say where that information came from and left open the possibility that it isn't true.
In televised interviews, Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump firmly believes the allegations he made on Twitter over the weekend. The aides said any ambiguity surrounding the issue is all the more reason for Congress to investigate the matter.
"We'd like to know for sure," Sanders, deputy White House press secretary, told NBC's "Today" show.
The House and Senate intelligence committees, and the FBI, are investigating contacts between Trump's campaign and Russian officials, as well as whether Moscow tried to influence the 2016 election. On Sunday, Trump demanded that they broaden the scope of their inquiries to include Obama's potential abuse of his executive powers.
--The Associated Press contributed to this report.