“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing Found. This is McCarthyism!”

On Mar. 4, President Donald Trump sent out this tweet, alleging that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his building during the election, despite not providing any evidence. Later the same day he tweeted again, confirming his previous accusation against Obama, adding that his phone was also tapped.

“The president is in a position of power and influence and making claims based on little to zero evidence causes confusion and he’s setting a bad example,” sophomore class president Kelsey Wu said. “People look up to their president, even if they didn’t vote for him or whatever, so it’s not a good thing at all to do that.”

His string of tweets garnered conversation among government agencies and the public because it is illegal for a president to wiretap any U.S. citizen without obtaining permission from officials of the Justice Department from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Obama’s spokesman Kevin Lewis denied of such wrongdoing soon after the tweets.

On Monday this week, FBI Director James Comey said there was not any evidence of Trump’s wiretapping allegations against Obama, but that his own agency had been investigating whether Trump was cooperating with Russians.

“His information was collected as part of routine data collection on Russian officials,” debate captain Misha Tseitlin (12) said. “If the president and his team had no contact with individuals the US deemed sufficiently threatening to surveil, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

Two days later, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes in a White House briefing on Wednesday revealed that he had personally seen evidence of Trump and his transitional team unrelated to FBI’s Russia investigation in intelligence reports. He also confirmed that Obama had not wiretapped Trump.

“I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were, I guess, at least monitored,” Nunes said in the press release. “It looks to me like it was all legally collected, but it was essentially a lot of information on the president-elect and his transition team and what they were doing.”

While it is common and legal for government intelligence agencies to target and record the activities between Americans and foreigners, Nune’s statement implies that intelligence agencies may have been actively trying to collect data not just on the foreign target in question but also on Trump’s transitional team and the specifics of what they were discussing. Nunes and his committee plan to gather more information from the FBI, CIA, and NSA today and are planning host a public hearing Tuesday next week, where they will most likely unveil their findings.

“[I think] this is likely to continue to weaken intelligence agencies,” Misha said. The US Intelligence community is an invaluable asset that ought not be alienated, but such [Trump’s] assertions are likely to further internal discord.”