Trump Falsely Accuses Obama of Wiretapping Trump Tower Based on "A Little Bit of a Hunch"

On March 4, 2017, President Trump tweeted a series of explosive and completely false accusations that former President Barack Obama had wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower “just before the victory.” Trump claimed he had “just found out” about the wiretapping but provided zero evidence to support the allegations. The tweets represented a dangerous escalation in Trump’s authoritarian attacks on his predecessor and the rule of law.

Trump’s baseless accusations were immediately denied by everyone with knowledge. Obama’s spokesman stated that “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen” and called the suggestion “simply false.” Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated definitively: “For the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.”

FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, 2017, that the Department of Justice and FBI had “no information to support” Trump’s wiretapping tweets. In September 2017, the Justice Department officially confirmed in a court filing: “Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.”

Most damning, Trump himself later admitted in 2019 that his accusations were based on “a little bit of a hunch”—confirming he had recklessly made serious criminal allegations against a former president without any factual basis whatsoever. The false wiretapping claims served multiple purposes: deflecting attention from the Russia investigation, creating a false equivalence to suggest both sides engaged in misconduct, and testing whether Trump could lie brazenly without consequences.

The episode revealed Trump’s willingness to weaponize presidential authority to make false criminal accusations, his contempt for truth and evidence, and the danger of a president who governs based on “hunches” rather than facts.