White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday she was speaking generally when she told a New Jersey newspaper there are many ways to surveil people, after she had been asked if she knew whether or not Trump Tower had been wiretapped.
“All I said to the Bergen Record is I was making a comment about the articles from this past week where it is revealed that one can be surveilled in any number of techniques — through microwaves, through cameras, through televisions,” Ms. Conway said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“I wasn’t making a suggestion about Trump Tower,” she said. “These are two separate things. … I answered about surveilling generally.”
“I have no evidence, but that’s why there’s an investigation in Congress,” Ms. Conway said.
The White House has asked the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to look into whether executive branch investigative powers were “abused” in 2016 as part of the panels’ broader investigations into Russian interference in last year’s election.
In the interview Sunday, Ms. Conway had been asked if she knew if Trump Tower had been wiretapped. President Trump recently claimed that former President Barack Obama had phones at Trump Tower wiretapped during last year’s campaign.
“What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other, now, unfortunately,” she had said. “There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of different ways.”
“Microwaves that turn into cameras, etcetera,” Ms. Conway said. “So we know that that is just a fact of modern life.”
The reference to television sets being used as surveillance devices is an allusion to a recent cache of purported CIA techniques recently revealed in a release from Wikileaks.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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