Horowitz did not find evidence Obama asked for probe of Trump

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz told Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that he was not aware of any evidence that former President Obama asked his administration to investigate then-candidate Donald Trump.

“We certainly didn’t see any evidence of that in the FBI’s files or the department’s files,” Horowitz said at a Wednesday hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on his report earlier this week about surveillance of the 2016 presidential campaign.

President Trump has claimed without evidence that his predecessor wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower, and has in recent months alluded to the possibility that Obama was aware of the surveillance of his campaign.

“They were spying on my campaign and it went right to the top and everybody knows it,” Trump said in an interview last month.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) later asked Horowitz if Obama specifically was aware of the counterintelligence investigation.

“I don’t know the answer to that definitively,” Horowitz said. “Our authority was over the FBI.”