Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., hasn't seen any evidence that backs up President Donald Trump's claim that his predecessor had wiretaps placed in Trump Tower, Politico reports.
"I don't think the FBI is the Obama team and I don't think the men and women who are career prosecutors at DOJ belong to any team other than a blindfolded woman holding a pair of scales," Gowdy said Monday, in response to Trump's tweeted accusation.
According to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, "Trump's claim that he was illegally wire-tapped by President Barack Obama was based on little more than Breitbart or other conspiracy-based news," in a statement, according to Politico.
The committee's chairman, California Republican Devin Nunes, said they will "make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates, and we will continue to investigate this issue if the evidence warrants it."
"We have the tools to keep us safe and it's prudent for those tools to be used lawfully and appropriately," Gowdy said. "If they're not used lawfully and appropriately, there's a paper trail and we'll be able to find it out."
Gowdy added that it's "hard to cross-examine tweets," and said that any records of government wiretaps would now belong to the Trump administration.
"The Obama team is no longer in charge," he said. "So any information the current Department of Justice has that suggests the previous Department of Justice acted inappropriately, they are welcome to release it."