Donald Trump has made his first comments about the UK since it was announced he would be making a state visit in June – and they’re not exactly flattering.
Posting on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, the president rehashed accusations that British spies helped the Obama administration spy on his 2016 presidential campaign.
Quoting a right-wing US news site’s headline, he wrote: ”‘Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign’.
“WOW! It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!”
Trump is referring to a story that originally surfaced on Fox News in March 2017 that Britain’s GCHQ spying agency had helped Obama “wiretap” him when he was running for president.
It fed into a tweet Trump posted earlier that month in which he made a similar claim without mentioning the UK.
There has been no evidence that Trump was wiretapped nor that GCHQ assisted.
When asked about Wednesday’s tweet, a GCHQ spokesman told Reuters: “The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wire tapping’ against the then President Elect are nonsense.
“They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”
Larry Johnson, the man quoted by Trump, is a former CIA analyst who it later transpired was the source of the Fox News story. He regularly appears on Russian state media to attack US intelligence agencies.
In 2008 he helped spread a false story that a video existed of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey”.
No tape or evidence to back up the claim has ever surfaced.