WASHINGTON (AP) – Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s national security adviser and the latest target for Donald Trump’s embattled defenders, firmly denies that she or other Obama officials used secret intelligence reports to spy on Trump associates for political purposes.
“Absolutely false,” Rice declared Tuesday.
The White House has seized on the idea that the Obama administration improperly surveilled the Republican during and after the November election – an accusation Democrats say is just another red herring thrown out to distract attention from investigations of Russian interference in the campaign on behalf of Trump.
Presidential spokesman Sean Spicer cast Rice’s handling of intelligence in the waning days of Obama’s term as suspicious, although he did not detail what he found to be inappropriate.
“The more we find out about this, the more we learn there was something there,” Spicer said.