He’s angry and making demands. But what happens if Donald Trump doesn’t get the answers he wants? Trump’s demand-tweet today sounds more like a threat:
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2018
So, it’s a showdown. And the Department of Justice won’t open an investigation for purely political reasons, which is exactly what Trump is asking. This was quite a change from only last month when he told Fox & Friends:
“I’ve taken the position — and I don’t have to take this position and maybe I’ll change — that I will not be involved with the Justice Department.”
From Vox:
- “The tweet appears to be a reaction to a pair of reports from the New York Times and the Washington Post this week that the FBI sent an informant to talk to Trump campaign advisers after the bureau found evidence the campaign had suspicious contacts with Russia in the early stages of the Russia investigation.”
- “The informant, an academic who both publications declined to identify, made contact with George Papadopoulos and Carter Page and, according to the Post, Sam Clovis in 2016. Trump and his allies have falsely claimed the informant was a “spy.”
Remember, the Mueller investigation started because of Trump campaign contacts with the Russians. Also, it was a reportedly inebriated George Papadopoulos who bragged about having dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-linked Russian professor. Hello Robert Mueller. Papadopoulos has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. From Vox:
- “But as the Times notes, there is no evidence that the informant was a secret spy sent to infiltrate the Trump campaign, as Trump and his allies claim. More likely: Investigators were trying to figure out just what was going on between these Trump guys and Russia.”
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. Never mind that DOJ has warned that lives and alliances are at risk. He doesn’t care. https://t.co/c1itPmiHnv
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 20, 2018
Telling DOJ what to investigate as though it was WH staff — especially when the directive is clearly aimed at outing a top secret national security asset to conceal evidence of presidential wrongdoing — may well be part of an impeachable pattern https://t.co/CSq7IjZiCH
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) May 20, 2018
With the Mueller investigation now widening to include possible election interference from countries not named Russia, Trump is now trying to change the narrative. Will Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions stand for this? This has all the makings of a crisis and a moment of danger for our country.