Bill Press: How the FBI elected Donald Trump
If only Donald Trump bothered to check facts before he made some outrageous assertions, except he never has, and never will.
If only Donald Trump bothered to check the facts before he made some outrageous assertion, except he never has, and never will. It’s not part of his DNA. As a result, we’ve had to deal with a whole string of wild statements that have no basis in reality.
He still claims, for example, that his inauguration attracted the largest crowd ever. It didn’t. That 5 million people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton. They didn’t. That he won more electoral votes than any president since Ronald Reagan. He didn’t. And that Barack Obama tapped his phones at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. That didn’t happen either.
Now to that list of whoppers you can add the most outlandish of all. Trump’s even branded it: “SPYGATE” — his totally unsubstantiated claim that the FBI planted a spy in his campaign headquarters at Trump Tower. But this time Trump not only tweeted out his phony accusation, he’s building a political campaign from the White House around it.
Abusing the powers of the presidency, Trump is pushing the spy lie on several fronts. He tweets about it nonstop. He’s unleashed Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Sanders, Sean Hannity, Fox’s Andrew Napolitano, Congressman Devin Nunes and other acolytes to make the same charge. Crossing a line no president since Nixon has dared cross, he’s ordered — yes, ordered — the Justice Department to open a special investigation into his perceived political enemies, in this case the FBI. And his re-election campaign put out a blast email asking supporters to sign a petition demanding a special investigation. It’s the biggest con job foisted on the American people, and Trump’s the greatest huckster since P.T. Barnum.
At the risk of taking all the fun out of it for Donald Trump, it’s important that we all get the story straight. Here’s the real skinny, which we’d never get from him.
What did not happen? The FBI did NOT plant a spy inside the Trump campaign. As reported by the New York Times and the Washington Post, that canard was immediately repudiated by both the FBI and Trump campaign staffers.
What did happen? The FBI DID, in fact, begin a criminal investigation into the Trump campaign because of tips they’d received that a few campaign aides had held questionable meetings with Russian officials, ostensibly for the purpose of seeking their assistance in the presidential election. It’s against the law for Russians to do that. And it’s against the law for Americans to help them. As part of that investigation, an informant, working for the FBI, interviewed Trump aides Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis.
What’s it mean? During the 2016 campaign, the FBI was conducting TWO criminal investigations, one on each major candidate. On Hillary Clinton, for crimes related to her use of a personal email server. And on Donald Trump, for crimes related to soliciting help from Kremlin operatives. The big difference is that we knew about one, but not the other. We knew all about the Clinton investigation, because James Comey chose to make it public. But we did not know about the Trump investigation, because Comey chose to keep it secret.
So why’s Trump stirring up this spy story? For the same reason he’s still attacking the media. Lesley Stahl, of “60 Minutes,” revealed this week that, shortly after his election, she asked Trump why, having won the election, he was still hammering on the media. “You know why I do it,” he told her. “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all. So when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”
And that’s exactly what’s behind the big, phony spy scandal: a carefully orchestrated campaign to discredit the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller so nobody will believe whatever damning conclusions they reach. It’s a pre-emptive strike to undermine the credibility of Mueller before his final report comes out. And if that’s not obstruction of justice, I don’t know what is.
What’s the takeaway? The big takeaway, which the media seems to be missing, is that James Comey and the FBI did Donald Trump a huge favor by keeping his investigation secret. No doubt, the fact that she was under investigation badly damaged Hillary Clinton. Had American voters known that Trump was also under investigation, for a much more serious crime, the results of the election might well have been just the opposite. Instead of attacking the FBI, Donald Trump should be thanking them.
Bill Press is syndicated by Tribune Content Agency.