Top lawmakers from both parties and a former leader in the U.S. intelligence community disputed President Donald Trump’s accusation that the FBI improperly embedded a “spy” in his 2016 campaign as part of an effort to keep him from winning the election.
At the time, the FBI had used an informant who contacted Trump campaign aides suspected of having contacts with Russia, as part of its counterintelligence probe into Moscow’s meddling in the election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller now heads that investigation.
Read: Trump laments ‘young and beautiful lives’ destroyed by collusion investigation[1]
But Michael Hayden, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the George W. Bush administration, said such activities aren’t unusual for a counterintelligence probe. The activity described so far is “stunningly normal,” Hayden told ABC on Sunday. “Everyone has handled this just about the way it should have been handled.” The president is “simply trying to delegitimize the Mueller investigation…and he’s willing to throw almost anything against the wall,” Hayden said.
Others on Sunday also took issue with Trump’s latest broadside against the FBI. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told ABC News that he had also seen no information so far suggesting any impropriety by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. “Up to now, what I have seen is evidence that they were investigating individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning,” said Rubio. “And that was appropriate, if that’s all that happened.” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the president’s comments mirrored previous efforts by the White House, which were subsequently discredited, to suggest wrongdoing by law enforcement during and after the 2016 election.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.[2]
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References
- ^ Trump laments ‘young and beautiful lives’ destroyed by collusion investigation (www.marketwatch.com)
- ^ An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com. (www.wsj.com)
- ^ Mike Meru has $1 million in student loans. How did that happen? (www.wsj.com)
- ^ Jeff Bezos: ‘We must go back to the moon, and this time to stay’ (www.wsj.com)