Donald Trump shares image of Barack Obama scaling Trump Tower
Donald Trump has tweeted a photoshopped image of Barack Obama scaling the walls of Trump Tower with suction cups and holding binoculars.
The image, which was posted without a caption, appeared to be a reference to Mr Trump’s claims that Mr Obama and the FBI illegally spied on him.
Mr Trump tweeted in March 2017: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
In 2018, the president started a conspiracy theory nicknamed “Spygate” that the Obama administration placed a spy in his 2016 presidential campaign in order to help his then rival, Hillary Clinton.
His accusations against the former US president were refuted by Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, who told the Senate in December there was no evidence that the FBI wiretapped Mr Trump’s phone.
The inspector general led a watchdog report into the FBI’s investigation of certain Trump aides and their suspected ties to the Russian government.
His findings concluded there were a number of “basic and fundamental” errors in the investigation but there was no evidence that Mr Obama or the FBI spied on the Trump campaign.
The report also said there was “no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any Confidential Human Sources (CHS) within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign”.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Mr Horowitz testified that the FBI’s probe was flawed and called it a “travesty” as agents “failed to meet the basic obligation to ensure applications for surveillance were “scrupulously accurate”.
Mr Trump repeatedly branded the FBI investigation a “witch hunt” and said it was an attempt to overthrow his government.
But the watchdog’s report concluded there was no “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias of improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations”.
