JD Vance Falsely Claims the FBI Illegally Wiretapped Trump

• Ohio Senate Candidate JD Vance during a rally said the FBI wiretapped Donald Trump’s phone. 
• Vance may have been referring to Obamagate, a conspiracy theory that Obama ordered the FBI to spy on Trump. 
• Others around Trump have been surveilled by the FBI, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

JD Vance falsely said at an Ohio rally on Saturday that the FBI illegally wiretapped former President Donald Trump during his presidency.

“But ladies and gentlemen, the thing that Trump revealed more than any policy achievement is that we are living in an incredibly corrupt country,” Vance said during his speech.

Vance, appearing on stage in Delaware, Ohio, with Trump, continued: “Who would have believed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, our FBI, would have gotten an illegal wiretap on a US president? Who would have believed?” 

—Acyn (@Acyn) April 23, 2022

Although it is unclear what Vance was referring to specifically, he could have been speaking about the wiretapping of  former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page or campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Page’s wiretapping specifically has been criticized in the past because the applications submitted by the FBI to begin surveilling him contained errors and omissions.

So far, no evidence has emerged that proves the FBI wiretapped Trump, although false and disproven reports from 2020 claim that the FBI admitted to and apologized for it.

Vance may have also been referring to a conspiracy theory stemming from a 2016 claim that former President Barack Obama worked with the FBI to wiretap Trump’s phone. Later dubbed Obamagate, the conspiracy was popularized after a set of tweets in which Trump complained about it. 

The Department of Justice and a former Obama spokesperson denied the allegations.

A representative for JD Vance did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.