President Trump reprised his accusations this week against the Obama administration for conducting surveillance on his campaign and transition teams, arguing the media has refused to pursue the improper “unmasking” that allegedly exposed his associates’ identities in intelligence reports.
“So they surveilled me,” Trump said of the Obama administration during an interview with Time that was published Thursday. “You guys don’t write that — wiretapped in quotes. They surveilled me.”
Trump has faced criticism for a series of tweets he posted in early March that accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his communications in Trump Tower during the campaign. The White House later clarified that Trump had been referencing surveillance in general by using the word “wiretap,” but his political opponents touted the accusations as a cut against the president’s credibility.
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes later revealed that Obama administration officials had unmasked the identities of Trump transition officials in dozens of reports that were then distributed widely throughout the government. Trump’s associates had their communications with foreigners swept up through “incidental collection,” which occurs when a foreign person already under surveillance by the U.S. government speaks to an American. In those cases, the names and any identifying information about the American citizens are supposed to be redacted in order to prevent unnecessary domestic surveillance.
But Nunes announced in March that multiple Trump associates had been identified in Obama-era intelligence reports, and the justification for their unmasking was not immediately clear from the evidence he had reviewed.
“The real story is the surveillance,” Trump said this week. “But my comms people can’t get it out.”
