The White House on Monday refused to answer questions about unfolding revelations that Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign paid a tech company to infiltrate servers at Trump Tower and the White House once Trump was sworn in as president.
At the daily press briefing, a reporter asked, "Does the president have any concerns about a candidate for president using computer experts to infiltrate computer systems of competing candidates, or even the president-elect to — for the goal of creating a narrative? Is that something that —"
Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre cut in with, "That’s something I can’t speak to from this podium, so I refer you to the Department of Justice.
When the reporter, followed up with, "Is what being described in that report — monitoring Internet traffic — is that spying?," Jean-Pierre repeated her previous answer referring the reporter to the Justice Department.
A third attempt at the question, prompted Jean-Pierre, "My answer is not going to change. I refer you to the Department of Justice."
According to this weekend's court filing, the Clinton campaign paid the tech company to infiltrate Trump Tower servers and later White House servers for the purpose of establishing an "inference" and "narrative" to give to government agencies to link Donald Trump and Russia.
According to the court filing, the tech executive used the company's access to government domain name system data because it had a pending cybersecurity contract with the government.
"Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOP’s DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump," Durham's filing said. EOP is the Executive Office of the President.
Trump slammed the actions following the report.
"This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution," Trump said in a statement issued Saturday through his Save America PAC. "In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death. In addition, reparations should be paid to those in our country who have been damaged by this."