CBS’s Lesley Stahl claimed “there’s no real evidence” of the Obama administration’s surveillance of President Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, offering her denial in a recent interview with the president for 60 Minutes.
Stahl dismissed the Obama administration’s documented surveillance of members and affiliates of Trump’s first presidential campaign after the president described it as a scandal.
“The biggest scandal was when they spied on my campaign,” said Trump of intelligence agencies tracking and surveilling his associates.
Stahl replied, “There’s no real evidence of that.”
Stahl later said former President Barack Obama’s surveillance of Trump’s presidential campaign had “never been verified.
Partial transcript below:
STAHL: Do you want to lock up [Barack] Obama?”
TRUMP: I don’t want to lock him up, but he spied on my campaign.
STAHL: Do you want to lock him up?
TRUMP: Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. Do you know what that is? Do you know what they did? Do you know how horrible it is what they did?
STAHL: That’s never been verified.
TRUMP: It’s been totally verified.
STAHL: No.
Stahl also claimed the contents of Hunter Biden’s allegedly abandoned laptop “can’t be verified,” offering literal circular reasoning to defend the statement during her interview with the president.
Trump released video on Thursday of his talk with Stahl ahead of the interview’s scheduled airing on Sunday.