The former spokesman for President Obama, Josh Earnest, is not definitively ruling out their administration ordered a wiretap on President Obama.
Earnest instead says that President Obama did not personally order a "wiretap of the Trump Tower."
Asked whether the administration ordered a wiretap -- and not Obama specifically -- Earnest clammed up.
He appeared on "This Week." Here's a transcript:
EARNEST: "Let me just remove the mystery here and explain to you and your viewers why it is false to say that President Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower. This may come as a surprise to the current occupant of the Oval Office, but the president of the United States does not have the authority to unilaterally order the wiretapping of an American citizen.
If the FBI decided to use their wiretapping authority in the context of the counterintelligence or criminal investigation, it would require FBI investigators, officials at the Department of Justice going to a federal judge, and making a case, and demonstrating probable cause to use that authority to conduct the investigation. That is a fact.
And here's the other thing that we know, Martha. And let's just remove the mystery from all of this. We know exactly why President Trump tweeted what he tweeted. Because there is one page in the Trump White House crisis management playbook. And that is simply to tweet or say something outrageous to distract from a scandal.
RADDATZ: Josh, I…
EARNEST: And the bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the tweet.
RADDATZ: We know about that denial from President Obama and the law as well. As President Obama's former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, your former colleague, tweeted: "I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the White House ordered it."
Can you categorically deny that the Obama Justice Department did not seek and obtain a FISA court order?
EARNEST: What I can categorically deny, Martha, is that the White House was at all involved in directing or interfering or influencing an FBI investigation of any sort.
RADDATZ: That's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking is, can you deny that the Obama Justice Department did not seek and obtain a FISA court-ordered wiretap of the Trump campaign?
EARNEST: It was a cardinal rule -- here's the simple answer to that question, is, Martha, I don't know. And it's not because I'm no longer in government. The fact is, even when I was in government, I was not in a position of being regularly briefed on an FBI criminal or counterintelligence investigation.
The White House -- no one at the White House, including the president of the United States, should be in a position in which they're trying to influence or dictate how that investigation is being conducted.
RADDATZ: Do you to know with whether the president was ever given information about surveillance at Trump Tower?
EARNEST: What I can tell you -- well, first of all, I'm not aware of all of the details of how the president was briefed by the FBI. But what I can tell you is the president was not giving marching orders to the FBI about how to conduct their investigations. He was not asking for regular updates on FBI investigations.
And let me just stipulate one more time, you have to ask the FBI whether there actually is an investigation into Mr. Trump, his associates, his campaign. That's for them to talk about. That is not something that was talked about or directed or managed by the White House, because this is a cardinal rule. These are rules that have been in place since Watergate, and for good reason.