Rudy Giuliani’s first weeks as President Trump’s lawyer have been hectic and full of contradictions—both Giuliani contradicting himself, and the president contradicting Giuliani. Underneath the chaos, however, it’s becoming possible to discern a fresh Trump legal strategy since the president shook up his team. Rhetorically Giuliani and Trump are pursuing a harder line. As the Mueller probe heads into its second year, it seems almost comical to say that Trump could ratchet up his approach to what he’s been calling a witch hunt for months now, yet there are signs of a genuine shift. For example, it was only two months ago that Trump first singled Mueller out by name in a tweet. Until this spring, Trump’s top two lawyers, John Dowd, his personal attorney, and Ty Cobb, a White House attorney, argued for cooperation with Mueller. Both have left Trump’s employ in recent months. The new strategy, particularly as demonstrated by Giuliani on CNN, follows three prongs. First, impugn the investigators themselves. Second, argue that the investigation was tainted from the start. Third, argue that Mueller cannot indict Trump anyway. The Cobb-Dowd strategy began with the assumption that Trump had nothing to hide. The new strategy, however, seems to take as its premise that Trump is guilty of at least something.
The Times’ mention of an informant has once again inspired conspiracy theories about the probe. In a tweet Friday morning, Trump quoted Fox host David Asman: “Apparently the DOJ put a Spy in the Trump Campaign. This has never been done before and by any means necessary, they are out to frame Donald Trump for crimes he didn’t commit.” We’ve heard this again and again. First, Trump claimed that Obama had “tapped” Trump’s “wires” during the campaign. This remark turned out to be nonsense, the result of a game of speculation in conservative media. Trump’s Justice Department said it was not true. Later, when it became clear that Manafort had been surveilled, some of Trump’s defenders claimed it vindicated his wiretap claim, which it did not, as I explained at the time. Trump continues to make such claims—“this is bigger than Watergate!” he wrote Thursday—and compliant media allies continue to hype them as proven. The apparent aim of the “embedded informant” talking point is to make the case that even if anyone did commit crimes, they were being entrapped and led into crimes by DOJ infiltrators who sought to take down Trump’s campaign. As Jonathan Chait notes, one problem with this implication is that they did no such thing and Trump won. The theory requires a special combination of dastardly genius and incompetence on the part of Trump’s supposed deep-state opponents. Even without understanding the reasons for the shift, it’s clear that out of the chaos of the last several weeks, Trump and Giuliani are defining a new approach, at once aggressive and defensive, toward the special counsel.
President Trump accused the F.B.I. on Friday, without evidence, of sending a spy to secretly infiltrate his 2016 campaign “for political purposes” even before the bureau had any inkling of the “phony Russia hoax.” In fact, F.B.I. agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign. The informant, an American academic who teaches in Britain, made contact late that summer with one campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, according to people familiar with the matter. He also met repeatedly in the ensuing months with the other aide, Carter Page, who was also under F.B.I. scrutiny for his ties to Russia. The role of the informant is at the heart of the newest battle between top law enforcement officials and Mr. Trump’s congressional allies over the F.B.I.’s most politically charged investigations in decades. The lawmakers, who say they are concerned that federal investigators are abusing their authority, have demanded documents from the Justice Department about the informant. Law enforcement officials have refused, saying that handing over the documents would imperil both the source’s anonymity and safety. The New York Times has learned the source’s identity but typically does not name informants to preserve their safety. Democrats say the Republicans’ real aim is to undermine the special counsel investigation. Senior law enforcement officials have also privately expressed concern that the Republicans are digging into F.B.I. files for information they can weaponize against the Russia inquiry.
Over the past two days, Mr. Trump has used speculative news reports about the informant, mostly from conservative media, to repeatedly assail the Russia investigation. “Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story. If true — all time biggest political scandal!” No evidence has emerged that the informant acted improperly when the F.B.I. asked for help in gathering information on the former campaign advisers, or that agents veered from the F.B.I.’s investigative guidelines and began a politically motivated inquiry, which would be illegal. But agents were leery of disrupting the presidential campaign again after the F.B.I. had announced in a high-profile news conference that it had closed the case involving Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, according to current and former law enforcement officials. After opening the Russia inquiry about a month later, they took steps, those officials said, to ensure that details of the inquiry were more closely held than even in a typical national security investigation, including the use of the informant to suss out information from the unsuspecting targets. Sending F.B.I. agents to interview them could have created additional risk that the investigation’s existence would seep into view in the final weeks of a heated presidential race. F.B.I. officials concluded they had the legal authority to open the investigation after receiving information that Mr. Papadopoulos was told that Moscow had compromising information on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” months before WikiLeaks released stolen messages from Democratic officials. As part of the operation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, the F.B.I. also began investigating Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his future national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.
President Trump and his allies are outraged at reports that the FBI used an “informant” to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign. “Really bad stuff!” the president tweeted early Friday. Supporters of the White House claim the FBI’s reported tactics were illegal. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has even subpoenaed the Justice Department for information on who the informant might have been; department and FBI officialssay public disclosures of this kind could put sources in danger. But Trump and his backers are wrong about what it means that the FBI reportedly was using a confidential source to gather information early in its investigation of possible campaign ties to Russia. The investigation started out as a counterintelligence probe, not a criminal one. And relying on a covert source rather than a more intrusive method of gathering information suggests that the FBI may have been acting cautiously — perhaps too cautiously — to protect the campaign, not undermine it. As a former FBI counterintelligence agent, I know what Trump apparently does not: Counterintelligence investigations have a different purpose than their criminal counterparts. Rather than trying to find evidence of a crime, the FBI’s counterintelligence goal is to identify, monitor and neutralize foreign intelligence activity in the United States. In short, this entails identifying foreign intelligence officers and their network of agents; uncovering their motives and methods; and ultimately rendering their operations ineffective — either by clandestinely thwarting them (say, by feeding back misinformation or “flipping” their sources into double agents) or by exposing them.
Ironically, the FBI’s apparent attempt to protect the campaign by investigating Russia’s efforts quietly is now being weaponized against it. Accusations that the FBI was “spying” on the Trump campaign — rather than spying on foreign spies, which is its job — erase the important distinctions between counterintelligence and criminal investigations. It also displays a shocking ignorance of the devastating consequences to our national security if the Justice Department hands over the information that Nunes is demanding: “Burning” the FBI’s purported source and exposing how it obtained intelligence against Russia’s efforts only helps Russia cover its tracks, change tactics and improve its future operations against the United States. The Trump administration’s assault against the FBI’s efforts to assess a national security threat posed by suspected foreign agents only raises more questions about what went on in 2016. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he is innocent of colluding with Russia and had no idea about his campaign staff’s Russia contacts. So he should be glad to know that the FBI appears to have been trying to thwart a hostile country’s efforts to infiltrate his campaign. That he and his allies in Congress do not even acknowledge that these individuals posed a national security threat and instead attack the FBI for apparently doing its job suggests that they would have been happy for whatever Russia was doing in 2016 to continue unimpeded.
And as we need to make patriotic Americans aware of this evil smokescreen they’re trying to pull over all of our eyes, let’s also keep in mind this coordinated plot is also being fully engaged by Trump’s lackeys in Congress & on Fox News. They’re playing their base for fools. Can thinking people actually believe when Trump & his cronies highlight a few specific examples of political partisanship in the 100,000+ strong agency of the DOJ/FBI, that extrapolates into the whole agency being politically biased? Come on now! In fact, we actually saw the FBI did far more to help Trump & hurt Hillary prior to the election, making public lingering doubts about Hillary’s actions while remaining silent on Trump’s mounting suspicions & strange contacts with lots of shady Russians. We must keep a watchful eye on such political enemies in the House & on Fox cooking up their nutty conspiracies to smear those associated with the investigations, especially names like Nunes, Meadows, Jordan & Hannity: they-would-wound-our-security-
Such as he gleefully signaled in the days leading up to the election that the Trump campaign had “something up their sleeves” to derail Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani once again teased the press last week that the Trump team was preparing to “make a fuss” on the one-year anniversary of Robert Mueller’s assignment as special counsel for the Russia investigation. Yesterday was the day, and the Trump defense brigade unveiled its extravaganza. The Washington Post reported: President Trump’s allies are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source. The effort reached new heights Thursday as Trump alleged that an informant had improperly spied on his 2016 campaign and predicted that the ensuing scandal would be “bigger than Watergate!” As usual Trump’s ignorance of facts and history is monumental. Perhaps it was the first scandal that came to mind since everyone’s always comparing him to Richard Nixon.
This is the latest smokescreen cooked up by House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes and the House Freedom Caucus, who are working overtime to find ways to take the heat off of their beloved leader. You may recall that Nunes has threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress for failing to reveal the name of this secret informant. A New York Times report that it’s possible this same informant may have spoken to former Trump campaign officials Carter Page and George Papadopoulos seems to have ratcheted up the frenzy. As is his wont, Giuliani took this and ran with it, telling the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on Thursday morning, “I’m shocked to hear that they put a spy in the campaign of a major party candidate, or maybe two spies. That would be the biggest scandal in the history of this town, at least involving law enforcement.” He further claimed that this proves there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government because “that spy should have been enough to tell them, ‘These people were not talking to the Russians.’ If they had incriminating evidence, they’d be able to wrap this investigation up. I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Actually, we know for a fact that the Trump campaign was crawling with Russians and that people at the highest levels were talking to them. There are a handful of former Trump officials either under indictment or cooperating after pleading guilty to various crimes, so Giuliani probably shouldn’t count his Chicken Kievs quite yet. But this “fuss” about the so-called spy in the Trump campaign is just one part of the new Nunes-Freedom Caucus-Giuliani-Trump strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation. The congressional hitmen will continue to harass the Department of Justice and the FBI, assisted by Donald Trump’s mighty Twitter feed. It may lead to Sessions and others being fired, including of course Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. But more likely Team Trump’s job is just to lay down covering fire and keep Fox News amply provided with bizarro-world storylines like these.
How many times have we heard from the president and his defenders that the Mueller investigation is “a witch hunt,” that “there’s nothing there” and it’s time to shut it down? As the inquiry enters its second year, Trump’s forces now appear to be falling back to a new trench. Whatever Team Trump did wrong, the FBI tricked them into doing it. As I’ve said before, I intend to wait until Mueller presents his findings before I draw conclusions about what has gone on. So far, what I know with confidence centers on a few key points: Russia hacked the election, which is a problem whether or not the outcome was affected. Candidate Trump was more connected to Putin’s circle during the campaign than he acknowledged. If his son Donald Trump Jr. didn’t collude with Russia, he certainly wanted to. And Donald Trump’s desire to shut down “this Russia thing” led to his ham-handed firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, which in turn gave us the Mueller probe. No deep-state conspiracy, just Trump’s own blundering, according to sometime adviser and confidant Stephen K. Bannon. It has been said many times: For a man protesting his innocence, Trump sure does act guilty. And that, more than anything, creates the air of mystery shrouding this topic. But at least we now know what he’s likely to say if and when we learn what he is hiding. Feds set me up.
President Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, claimed that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has narrowed “from five to two” the number of subjects about which he wants to interview Trump. This is quite likely a story cooked up by a Trump lawyer who has repeatedly made untrue statements. There aren’t only five topics, and no one not employed by Fox News or the White House thinks Mueller has agreed to further limit any topics about which the president may have information. Even worse, Trump and Giuliani have created a story that the FBI planted someone to spy on the Trump campaign. Sadly, the media has run wild with that allegation. But the Trump team really cannot say that this wild allegation is true. This effort smacks of a glaring attempt to disrupt the investigation (in other words, obstruction) and to put his own personal need (to avoid impeachment and/or indictment) above those of the country and the work of an FBI source. Simply because Trump and his associates so cavalierly lie and smear law enforcement, and disrupt ongoing investigations for selfish reasons, there is no reason to stop pointing out how egregious this behavior is.
The President of the United States continues to exhibit clear signs of consciousness of guilt and a festering fear of exposure. Donald Trump’s Twitter feed would make a fascinating psychiatric study exploring acute paranoia in political leaders. Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum was likely inspired by his senior strategic advisor, Sean Hannity. As the top Trump-fluffer on Fox News Hannity has already initiated a campaign to smear special prosecutor Robert Mueller with an new emphasis on this being the one year anniversary of his appointment (as if that had any relevance to anything). Hannity and Trump are so cognitively aligned that they are now – as Stephen Colbert said – finishing each other’s prison sentences. And the familiar rhetoric of “fake news” and “witch hunt” flow from both of them as if in harmony. So now Trump is blaming America for investigating his unsavory connections to Russia and his unlawful attempts to cover it up. And he continues to bleat out impotent declarations that there has been no collusion despite all of the evidence that is known, and even more that Mueller surely has but is not yet ready to disclose. And if that weren’t enough, Trump has also adopted the wingnut conspiracy theory that Obama planted a spy in his presidential campaign.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier said in an interview with The New Yorker that was published Friday that “it pains me” when he hears his network referred to by critics and competitors as “state TV” for the Trump administration. In the piece, The New Yorker mentions Baier as attempting to maintain journalistic integrity while working in an environment that “often” celebrates President Trump. “On a network that often outright celebrates the President, Baier has tried to maintain a reputation as a hard-questioning newsman,” the piece read. “And he said in our interview that ‘it pains me’ to hear Fox called ‘state TV’ for the Trump Presidency.” “I have not gotten an interview with the president, and it’s 534 since I did one with candidate Trump, not like anybody’s counting,” Baier continued.
On-air hosts and anchors on Fox rivals MSNBC and CNN have referred to Fox News as “state-run TV” since President Trump took office. CNN President Jeff Zucker has characterized the network in that fashion on several occasions. “[Fox News] is really state-run TV,” Zucker said at an industry conferencein March. “It is a pure propaganda machine and I think does incredible disservice to this country.” Baier on Thursday told “The View” that Fox News is criticized unfairly and asked those who haven’t seen his program, “Special Report,” to tune in three times and provide him direct feedback on email or Twitter on whether the show “covers all sides fairly” or not. “If you watch my show, you know, some of the loudest critics of Fox don’t watch my show,” Baier said. “We’re on the news side and there’s an opinion side. I say to people, just watch my show three times and drop me an email or a tweet and tell me what you think. … I’m going to cover all sides fairly so people can make up their minds.”
“The day that we can’t protect human sources is the day the American people start becoming less safe,” Wray told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Human sources in particular who put themselves at great risk to work with us and with our foreign partners have to be able to trust that we’re going to protect their identities and in many cases their lives and the lives of their families.”
The President of the United States continues to exhibit clear signs of consciousness of guilt and a festering fear of exposure. Donald Trump’s Twitter feed would make a fascinating psychiatric study exploring acute paranoia in political leaders. Trump’s latest Twitter tantrum was likely inspired by his senior strategic advisor, Sean Hannity. As the top Trump-fluffer on Fox News Hannity has already initiated a campaign to smear special prosecutor Robert Mueller with an new emphasis on this being the one year anniversary of his appointment (as if that had any relevance to anything). Hannity and Trump are so cognitively aligned that they are now – as Stephen Colbert said – finishing each other’s prison sentences. And the familiar rhetoric of “fake news” and “witch hunt” flow from both of them as if in harmony. So now Trump is blaming America for investigating his unsavory connections to Russia and his unlawful attempts to cover it up. And he continues to bleat out impotent declarations that there has been no collusion despite all of the evidence that is known, and even more that Mueller surely has but is not yet ready to disclose. And if that weren’t enough, Trump has also adopted the wingnut conspiracy theory that Obama planted a spy in his presidential campaign.
Fox News anchor Bret Baier said in an interview with The New Yorker that was published Friday that “it pains me” when he hears his network referred to by critics and competitors as “state TV” for the Trump administration. In the piece, The New Yorker mentions Baier as attempting to maintain journalistic integrity while working in an environment that “often” celebrates President Trump. “On a network that often outright celebrates the President, Baier has tried to maintain a reputation as a hard-questioning newsman,” the piece read. “And he said in our interview that ‘it pains me’ to hear Fox called ‘state TV’ for the Trump Presidency.” “I have not gotten an interview with the president, and it’s 534 since I did one with candidate Trump, not like anybody’s counting,” Baier continued.
On-air hosts and anchors on Fox rivals MSNBC and CNN have referred to Fox News as “state-run TV” since President Trump took office. CNN President Jeff Zucker has characterized the network in that fashion on several occasions. “[Fox News] is really state-run TV,” Zucker said at an industry conferencein March. “It is a pure propaganda machine and I think does incredible disservice to this country.” Baier on Thursday told “The View” that Fox News is criticized unfairly and asked those who haven’t seen his program, “Special Report,” to tune in three times and provide him direct feedback on email or Twitter on whether the show “covers all sides fairly” or not. “If you watch my show, you know, some of the loudest critics of Fox don’t watch my show,” Baier said. “We’re on the news side and there’s an opinion side. I say to people, just watch my show three times and drop me an email or a tweet and tell me what you think. … I’m going to cover all sides fairly so people can make up their minds.”
“The day that we can’t protect human sources is the day the American people start becoming less safe,” Wray told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Human sources in particular who put themselves at great risk to work with us and with our foreign partners have to be able to trust that we’re going to protect their identities and in many cases their lives and the lives of their families.”
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