TAPPER: So, let's start with President Trump's allegation, so far evidence-free, that President Obama sought to have him wiretapped during the campaign.
You're part of the Gang of Eight. That's a group of House and Senate leaders, both the leadership and the leadership of the Intelligence Committees, that would be privy, one suspects, to such information.
Do you have any idea what he's talking about?
PELOSI: Well, the president, you know, is the deflector in chief, anything to change the subject from where the heat is.
And, as one who has been engaged in intelligence, a member of the Gang of Eight, for a long time, I can tell that it's just ridiculous for the president, President Trump, to say that President Obama would ever order any wiretap of an American citizen, any president.
That's just not – we don't do that. And, so, this is – it's called a wrap-up smear. You make up something. Then you have the press write about it. And then you say, everybody is writing about this charge.
It's a tool of an authoritarian, to just have you always be talking about what you want them to be talking about. Rather than Russia, we're talking about, did President Obama do thus and so?
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1703/05/sotu.01.html