Administration

Durbin: Trump wiretapping tweet a ‘flight of fancy in the middle of the night’

A top Senate Democrat brushed off President Trump’s tweeted accusations of President Obama wiretapping him as a late-night “flight of fancy.” 

“We know what this was: it was a flight of fancy in the middle of the night,” Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in an interview with MSNBC Wednesday. 

Durbin said that Trump firing off tweets with no evidence shows that Trump’s claims are unfounded.

{mosads}”Lets be honest about this, this was a tweet at 6:30 in the morning,” Durbin said. “If this was a serious charge by the president of the United States of what would be an impeachable offense against the previous president, wouldn’t he call a press conference in daylight? Wouldn’t he have, next to him, people from the Department of Justice and from the intelligence agencies?” 

Trump accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign, likening it to McCarthyism and the Watergate scandal. 

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump tweeted

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” he added in another tweet.
 
Durbin warned that GOP lawmakers will be “embarrassed” by the issue and maintained that investigations of the Russian interference in the 2016 election must continue.
 
“And many of the Republicans who are joining in this chorus ultimately will be embarrassed by this. But we need to continue this investigation into the Russian connection,” he said.