White House Requests Probe Into Obama Administration
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: You are looking at pictures of the president arriving at Joint Base Andrews after a weekend in Florida, a weekend that included him accusing President Obama of wiretapping his phones during the campaign, an allegation President Trump provided no evidence to support. Both his predecessor and former director of national intelligence say it's simply not true. But the White House wants an investigation. Press Secretary Sean Spicer saying this morning, quote, "Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. President Donald J. Trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016. Neither the White House nor the president will comment further until such oversight is conducted." All of this amid new reports of rising frustration between the president and his staff over the continued talk about ties to Russia. I want to bring in, CNN's White House correspondent Athena Jones. She is live near the president's Mar-a-Lago estate. So, Athena, what are you hearing about those conversations between President Trump and his team regarding their handling of these Russia reports?</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Pamela. Well, this is interesting. There was an animated discussion in the Oval Office on Friday. This was captured on camera. You could see the president's chief strategist Steve Bannon, he's also a top adviser, speaking animatedly to several people in the Oval Office. And we've been reporting since yesterday that according to multiple sources, the president was angry on Friday, as he prepared to leave the White House and come down here to Florida. He was described as showing increasing flashes of anger over his senior staff and that includes also his press team and his communications team and their handling of all these stories about Russia ties or about Trump aides having ties or contacts with Russian officials. Particularly angry about the fact that the stories about Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his contacts, his meetings with Russia's ambassador overshadowed what he saw as rave reviews from his speech to Congress on Tuesday night, that speech to a joint session that was well-reviewed. A lot of people saying he acted presidentially and it garnered some good headlines. And he was also mad about nonstop leaks that he feels are undermining his administration. One source speaking of the president on Friday said that he, quote, "nobody has seen him that upset." Well, just the last few hours, we have new reporting from my colleague White House producer Kevin Liptak who said the president's angry mood followed him down here to Mar-a-Lago, according to two people who have spoken with him at his resort in the last 24 hours. They say that in conversations, in casual conversations, the president has continued to express his frustrations with his team and his frustrations with their handling of the Russia story. Now, the president didn't direct that anger at any particular aid, but he griped that his staff had failed to contain the Russia story. The president also angrily raised the wiretapping issue unprompted in his conversations with friends at the club. He didn't specify what information he was basing his accusations on, but he told those members what you said in the lead in to me. He told those members he expected an investigation to prove him right. So, a very frustrated president right now. We are also seeing -- we have confirmed reports of staff members feeling -- facing intense moments. Some people leaving meetings in tears -- Pamela.</s>BROWN: And we see here on the other side of the screen from where you are, Athena, we see Marine One leaving with the president, as well as Steve Bannon, en route to the White House. Athena Jones, thank you so much for your latest reporting there. And I want to bring in my panel now. Kimberly Dozier is CNN global affairs analyst and senior national security correspondent for "The Daily Beast." Also with us, CNN political analyst Josh Rogin, he's also a columnist for "The Washington Post." And Brian Stelter, host of "RELIABLE SOURCES" and our senior media correspondent. Great to have you all on. Brian, first to you. You have some brand new reporting. What are you hearing?</s>BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Following up on what Athena was sharing about President Trump's mood this weekend, I was just speaking via e-mail with Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax. It's one of the conservative news outlets that's been covering Trump. Ruddy is a member at Mar-a-Lago. So, he was with Trump twice on Saturday. According to Ruddy, he's never seen the president this angry, at least not in a long time. He described the president's mood this weekend as pissed. So, that's backing up the reporting from Athena Jones and Kevin Liptak about what the president has been saying to his friends and associates this weekend in Mar-a-Lago. Now, he said, where is the president getting this information about this idea of a wiretap against him? There's no evidence for it at all. So, Ruddy said he does not know for sure. Trump wouldn't say what the source was. But what he was describing lines up exactly with what Breitbart published on Friday. You know, our own Jeff Zeleny, Jake Tapper, others have said that it seems that the president's source for this was the conservative radio host Mark Levin, and then a Breitbart news story about these wiretap ideas and about this broader idea of the administration undermining him. So, here's what Trump said to Ruddy, quote, "This will be investigated. It will all come out. I will be proven right." So that's what Ruddy wrote for newsmax.com. Now, following up with me tonight, Ruddy was saying Trump seemed, quote, "so confident it was true and seemed to know the whole trails of the FISA actions and was recounting them to me." So, the message from Ruddy, the takeaway from his conversations this weekend was that the president truly does believe that he was the victim of this attempt by the Obama administration to tap into his phones, that he believes it will come out eventually and that he is pissed about what's going on.</s>BROWN: And so, all of this still, you know, you have the question of where was he getting his information from to tweet out this accusation and White House staffers have been asked that. Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about the president making such serious claims without citing any evidence. And here's what she said.</s>SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: As you're always telling us to take the media seriously -- well, we are today. We're taking the reports that places like "The New York Times," FOX News, BBC, multiple outlets have reported this. All we're saying is let's take a closer look. Let's look into this. If this happened, if this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal.</s>MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC/"THIS WEEK": The president of the United States is accusing the former president of wiretapping him.</s>SANDERS: I think that this is again something that if this happens, Martha --</s>RADDATZ: If, if, if.</s>SANDERS: I agree.</s>RADDATZ: Why is the president saying it did happen?</s>SANDERS: Look, I think he's going off of information he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential. And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that I think we've ever seen in a huge attack on democracy itself and the American people have a right to know if this took place.</s>BROWN: Josh, we should point out it's not true that "The New York Times" and other outlets reported that Obama wiretapped Trump. So, what do you make of this what you just heard there?</s>JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, the president is clearly very upset about the ongoing investigation into his campaign and administration ties with the Russians. He's latched on to this report as evidence of the conspiracy between the FBI and the Obama administration, and he's demanding -- he's put together a bunch of dots that it have not been supported by any evidence or proof and he's going with that. And he's -- now, he's created a situation where we all have to sort of figure it out. And the first people that are going to figure it out are the House Intelligence Committee who are investigating the underlying accusations of collusion and now have to sort of investigate the investigation. So, in one fell swoop, the Trump White House has taken these unsourced, sort of anonymous, piecemeal reports, brought them to the fore, forced us all to sort of deal with them and then muddied the waters because no matter now what the investigation comes up with, they will be able to sort of point back to this and say, well, this was some sort of conspiracy between the Obama White House and the FBI. And again, that's not really based on anything, but it creates doubt and that maybe the point of this.</s>STELTER: -- confusion benefits people in power, creating confusion. But this is a complicated story no matter what. There were news reports months ago from "Heat Street" and "The Guardian" and BBC that perhaps some of Trump's associates, several Trump associates were going to be ensnared in a FISA order, so that perhaps their communications or their bank records were obtained by the U.S. government, at that time the Obama administration. Trump, of course, going several steps further, saying that Obama was personally listening to Trump's own phone calls. There's nothing ever reported to indicate that. But because there are those reports from months ago that it sounds are going to Ruddy, Trump had heard about it, you can understand sort of a sick game of telephone how this has become confused, where, yes, there has been an investigation going on and, yes, the Obama administration was looking into this, and maybe some of Trump's associates were pursued in months ago. But then, it becomes something different, it's translated by Trump this weekend into something that has no evidence whatsoever.</s>ROGIN: And we should also note that James Clapper denied today that there were any FISA warrants and there's also reporting that by some outlets that FBI Director Comey is asking the Justice Department to publicly state that what Trump is claiming was true.</s>BROWN: Right, we're trying to get that. We don't have that reporting confirmed here on CNN yet. But, Kim, I want to read this tweet from Congressman Ted Lou, a Democrat from California. He says, "Mr. President, if there's a wiretap at Trump Tower, that means a federal judge found probable cause of crime, which means you are in deep blank." And so, essentially, what the congressman is saying is either the judge thought there was enough evidence to have your phone wiretapped, or the other option, the other alternative would be that Trump was simply wrong in making this accusation against the former president of the United States. Does he have a point?</s>KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, it does raise the question as to whether President Trump understands how the process works, understands what it takes to get a wiretap on an American citizen. But what this has effectively done is change the scandal from did the Trump campaign collude with Moscow against a sitting president to did a sitting president repeat the sins of Nixon and try to keep Trump from taking the White House. And that is going to work with his base and that's going to be something that we in the media have to chase, deal with and try to smack down, and ultimately the documents that would prove this isn't true are classified or don't exist and it would be up to Donald Trump to unclassify, declassify them because he has the ultimate declassification authority as the president if there's any sort of resolution to this.</s>BROWN: So, clearly, Brian, he has not been happy with the Russia headlines that followed his State of the Union Address that was widely praised. But does a tweet like that, or do these tweets basically accusing the former president of wiretapping his phone, which would have been part of this FBI investigation hypothetically into Trump associates, does it keep Russia in the headlines essentially, opposite of what the president wants?</s>STELTER: Right, you're right. It sort of does keep this entire issue in the headlines. But I think Kim is on to something really crucial here. We can't underestimate the potency of this story that President Trump has presented and that Mark Levin presented on the radio on Thursday, saying this was a silent coup, and then Breitbart advanced on Friday, and that the president himself on Saturday. The idea here, the story line here that it's Obama's fault, that this is all Obama's fault. That you should blame the former president for trying to take down Trump. That is a very compelling story line. I mean, look at the millions of page views for those stories on conservative websites this weekend. That's incredibly compelling as a story if you are inclined to buy into it. If you want to believe that the former president is trying to hurt the new guy. So, yes, it does keep Russia in the news, but it presents a really compelling talking point for Trump loyalists who believe their candidate, their man is being torn down right now.</s>BROWN: All right. Brian Stelter, Kim Dozier, Josh Rogin -- thanks for breaking it down for us. We appreciate it.</s>ROGIN: Thank you.</s>DOZIER: Thank you.</s>BROWN: And coming up on this Sunday, this father and his son's tragic story may present the president's best argument against sanctuary cities.</s>SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Who do you blame besides the actual person who killed your son for the death of your son?</s>JAMIEL SHAW SR., FATHER OF L.A. TEEN SLAIN BY UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT: Anybody who supports sanctuary cities.