What had been brewing for a number of weeks escalated this past weekend when President Trump demanded the Justice Department call for an inquiry into actions by the FBI in surveilling his campaign.
Prompted by reports from the Washington Post of an FBI informant who infiltrated his campaign staff, the president called on the agency to investigate itself in a tweet:
“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”
On the Friday before Trump’s stern words the Post reported on a person it called an ‘informant’ who assisted the Mueller investigation in gathering information about possible Russian election interference. The Post reported that the source, an unnamed retired American professor, had contacts with at least three Trump advisers during the presidential campaign of 2016.
At first, Democrats claimed Trump’s accusation of FBI spying was ridiculous. But then, the Wall Street Journal identified the informant as former foreign policy scholar at the University of Cambridge, Stefan Halper.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (Rep-CA) issued a subpoena last month to the Justice Department seeking all documents related to Halper. To this point, department officials have refused to answer those demands, claiming that exposing the source could put him in danger and endanger international intelligence.
Now, with the President’s public demands, The Department of Justice had little choice but to investigate.
Halper, who was a foreign policy analyst under three Republican administrations, arranged a meeting in London with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign employee. When Papadopoulos accepted a meeting in October 2016, Mr. Halper reportedly asked, “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”
Representative Mark Meadows (Rep – NC) said the President had every right to make the call in pressuring the DOJ into action. At the same time, he questioned the ability of the Justice Department to police itself. He tweeted:
“The DOJ can’t be trusted to investigate themselves — Congress needs the documents too. [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein: where are the documents? Show Americans the truth.”
For now, it appears that the Justice Department is taking the matter seriously as it has expanded its investigation of Mueller and the FISA courts to include the questions raised by Trump.
The DOJ has asked the inspector general to determine if there has been any political motivation in the manner in which the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with Russian agents who attempted to interfere the presidential election of 2016.
The department said that it would consult a U.S. attorney if evidence of criminal conduct was found. Deputy Attorney General said, “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”
Rosenstein has shown already that he is hardly one to trust so there may well be a second special counsel on the horizon.
Adam Schiff (Dem-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee tweeted in response to the DOJ accepting Trump’s request:
“Trump’s claim of an embedded ‘spy’ is nonsense. His ‘demand’ DOJ investigate something they know to be untrue is an abuse of power, and an effort to distract from his growing legal problems.”
But Schiff’s “nonsense” rebuff proved even less trustworthy when Kimberley Strassel of The Wall Street Journal wrote that she believes there was an FBI mole inside the campaign. “This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting,” she said.
The timing for an investigation that puts the FBI on notice could not be better as Washington is less than a month away for the inspector general’s report on the Clinton investigation many conservative have feared would be glossed over.
The report is expected to detail a litany of tactics used by the “deep state” to undermine President Trump. Perhaps Jeff Sessions will do his job this time and freely comply with the internal investigation.
~ American Liberty Report
