WASHINGTON - FBI Director James Comey has asked the US Justice Department to publicly reject President Donald Trump's claim that his predecessor Barack Obama ordered wiretapping of his phones during last year's election, media reports said on Sunday.

Comey made the request on Saturday after Trump accused Obama of tapping his phones at the Trump Tower in New York just ahead of the Election Day in November, the reports cited senior US officials as saying.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Trump compared the alleged wiretapping to the Watergate political scandal in the 1970s that brought down former Republican president Richard Nixon for wiretapping the rival Democratic Party. But Trump did not provide any evidence to support his assertion.