Say It Ain’t So: FBI Director James Comey over the weekend asked the Justice Department to knock down President Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that his phones were tapped last fall on the orders of President Obama. Comey’s request puts him at odds with the credibility of the new president.

Both the Justice Department and the FBI would know whether there was ever a warrant authorizing the tapping of Trump’s phone. former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on NBC, “There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, or as a candidate or against his campaign.”

Offering no evidence, the White House issued a demand from the president yesterday demanding a Congressional investigation into his claims.

“Reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement.

The statement also says, Trump “is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016.”

Indicating that Trump will offer no proof of his claim, the statement says, “Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted.”

The NY Times traces the story back to a conspiratorial rant by radio host Mark Levin, who said, Obama had used the “instrumentalities of the federal government” to wiretap then-candidate Trump. The charge was then picked up by the right-wing Breitbart News, a favorite of Trump’s.

Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne writes that Trump may be damaged no matter how this goes. “If he was not wiretapped, he invented a spectacularly false charge. And if a court ordered some sort of surveillance of him, on what grounds did it do so?”

Hermit Kingdom: North Korea launched four ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan, one of them flying about 620 miles and crossing into Japan’s “exclusive economic zone.” Under UN sanctions, North Korea is prohibited from firing ballistic missiles. Experts believe the North Koreans still do not have the technology to mount their missiles with miniaturized nuclear warheads.

The Obit Page: Dr. Thomas Starzl, who performed the first liver transplant and eventually made the operation a common procedure, has died at age 90. Starzl’s first transplant patient died after rejecting the new liver. Starzl developed anti-rejection drugs and over the years, thousands of people’s lives have been saved by liver transplants.

Social Notes: The estate of former British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore has revealed a trove of love letters written to him by Jackie Kennedy Onassis. In one letter, she wrote, “You and I have shared so many lives and deaths and hopes and pain — we will share them forever and be forever bound together by them. If ever I can find some healing and some comfort it has to be with someone who is not part of all my world and past and pain.”

Despite those feelings, Jackie abruptly married the withered Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis because he was a “wise and kind” man who “wants to protect me from being lonely.”

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