British intelligence has rejected claims that it was asked by the administration of former President Barack Obama to spy on then-President Elect Donald Trump after the 2016 presidential election.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the equivalent of America’s National Security Agency, says it never happened.
It is true that the GCHQ, which works closely with the NSA, has immense global surveillance capabilities. It is true too that NSA’s surveillance apparatus was focused on the Trump campaign at least once.
As part of the U.S. investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian state agents, the NSA, with approval of a secret FISA court, did capture the conversations of one Trump operative Carter Page.
On Wednesday President Trump tweeted that a former CIA analyst turned conspiracy theorist, Larry Johnson, had made the allegation against the GCHQ.
Johnson is not a reliable source. In the 2008 campaign, he offered reporters the bogus story that Michelle Obama had used a racial slur against white people.
“As we have previously stated, the allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wire tapping’ against the then President are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored,” Reuters quoted the spokesman as saying.
Source: PressTV-UK intel. rejects spying on Trump
