FBI asks Justice Department to reject Trump's wiretapping claim

WASHINGTON - FBI Director James Comey has asked the US Justice Department to publicly reject President Donald Trump's claim that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered wiretapping of his phones during last year's election, media reports said on Sunday.

Comey made the request on Saturday after Trump accused Obama of tapping his phones at the Trump Tower in New York just ahead of the Election Day in November, the reports cited senior US officials as saying.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Trump compared the alleged wiretapping to the Watergate political scandal in the 1970s that brought down former Republican president Richard Nixon for wiretapping the rival Democratic Party. But Trump did not provide any evidence to support his assertion.

Comey argued that Trump's claim was false and must be corrected, the senior officials were quoted as saying.

Obama has already refuted Trump's claim as "simply false".

Trump on Sunday also demanded Congress investigate the "potentially politically motivated" wiretapping of his phones.

The White House said that Trump requested 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".

Trump's "wiretapping" accusation came after days of media reports about the contacts between some members of his campaign team and Sergey Kislyak, Russian ambassador to Washington.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday he would recuse himself from any current or future investigations into Russia's possible link with Trump's presidential campaign, after admitting that he met with Kislyak twice last year but did not reveal it at the Senate hearings for his confirmation.

Trump and his aides have denied there were any improper contacts.