White House press secretary Sean Spicer says President Trump is “extremely confident” that evidence exists to prove he was wiretapped by former President Barack Obama, but Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House minority whip, said Tuesday night on CNN’s “Erin Burnett Outfront” that the allegation is “untrue” and nothing more than “an alternative fact.”
Hoyer said if there was proof, “They would have disclosed it to the Congress, but more importantly the American people and President Trump would have been happy to do that.”
“The fact is I think his representation was untrue. It’s an alternative fact. It’s either made up in his own head and there’s no evidence to corroborate that,” he said. “So, he may be extremely confident, but we’ve seen him day after day after day be very confident that things were as they are not. He makes it up as he goes along.”
The Trump administration has not yet released any evidence to back up the claim, and Monday asked for more time to comply with a House Intelligence Committee request to provide proof backing up the allegation. Hoyer said he doesn’t buy the delay.
“It makes me think they don’t have it and they’re trying to figure out how to get out of a statement that the President made that is not true and they can’t corroborate,” he said.
Hoyer also slammed Spicer for saying Trump did not specifically mean he was wiretapped, but was talking about surveillance in general.
Hoyer said that is the White House “trying to weasel out of a very, very serious and unfortunate allegation the President made off the top of his head.”
“Wiretap means something specific to every American, every American knows what a wiretap is,” he added.
The White House has repeatedly said fears of surveillance are genuine, and evidence of the claims is forthcoming.
Hoyer on Kellyanne Conway
Hoyer also weighed in on an interview in “The Atlantic” in which Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, said Kellyanne Conway saved Trump’s candidacy after the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump spoke about sexually assaulting women was leaked.
Bannon told the magazine, “If Kellyanne had not been there when the firestorm hit, I don’t know if we would have made it. … She literally became a cult figure during that time period.”
Hoyer didn’t disagree, saying, “I think there is a lot of merit in that argument.”
“I think the women of America were extraordinarily offended and outraged by the statement and the alleged conduct, or the conduct that he said he involved himself in,” he said.
“What Kellyanne did — a woman came forward, an articulate woman, and said, ‘Look, he really didn’t mean that, that’s not the kind of person he is, I know him,’ and she gave her imprimatur to Donald Trump, and we know an awful lot of women did in fact vote for Donald Trump, which I find very, very surprising given what he said and his conduct. So I think there’s some merit in what Bannon says on that issue, because I think Kellyanne Conway did in fact give him some greater credibility than he otherwise would have had as a result of that tape.”