Trump, agencies’ officials meet

Justice agrees to data-sharing

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department agreed to show congressional Republicans “highly classified” information they have demanded from the Russia probe, the White House said after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray met Monday with President Donald Trump.

The department also agreed to ask its official watchdog to look into “any irregularities” in its investigation of Trump’s campaign, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

The outcome of the meeting averted a potential showdown after Trump demanded in a tweet Sunday that Justice investigate whether the FBI had an informant inside his 2016 presidential campaign.

“Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump campaign,” Sanders said.

She said the men also agreed that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly would set up a meeting for congressional leaders to review “highly classified and other information they have requested” from the Justice

Department’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The significance of that was not immediately clear. Justice Department leaders have fought vigorously against revealing to Congress materials on the source. It was not clear whether they had backed down from their position and would now allow GOP leaders to look at the documents, or whether there would simply be a follow-up meeting for more discussion.

A Justice Department spokesman had no immediate comment.

Some Republican lawmakers have demanded sensitive internal documents they say will show the investigation into Russian meddling and whether anyone close to Trump colluded in it was tainted by improper actions long before the appointment a year ago of special counsel Robert Mueller.

There was no accord on what would be handed over, according to one person familiar with the meeting. Rosenstein is going to work with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to see what — if anything — can be handed over or declassified, said

the person, who asked not to be identified discussing the closed session.

Coats also participated in Monday’s White House meeting, according to two U.S. officials. He will be part of the meeting Kelly will convene as well, Sanders said.

“Rosenstein is an honorable guy, and I can’t imagine he’d go along with something as inappropriate as investigating someone at the behest of the president,” said Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican who’s a frequent Trump critic.

Rosenstein declined to answer questions from reporters upon his return from the White House.

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Politico that Trump would ask the Justice Department officials to turn over to Congress and his legal team all memos they have about the purported informant. Trump tweeted that he would order the Justice Department to investigate the matter on Sunday.

The Justice Department probe began in March at the request of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and congressional Republicans. Sessions and the lawmakers urged Inspector General Michael Horowitz to review whether FBI and Justice Department officials abused their surveillance powers by using information

compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy, and paid for by Democrats to justify monitoring Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to Trump.

Horowitz said his office will look at those claims as well as communications between Steele and Justice and FBI officials.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel, said in a tweet on Sunday that the president’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.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor: “The president’s behavior is the kind of grossly autocratic behavior we’d expect in a banana republic, not a mature democracy. By now, we should all recognize that President Trump’s latest demand is just another example of a relentless campaign to distract from the serious wrongdoing being uncovered by the Russia probe.”

Some House Republicans allied with the president have dismissed Rosenstein’s move to have the inspector general look into the matter.

“Rod Rosenstein knows exactly

what happened and what is in the documents requested by Congress,” Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican and Trump confidant, said on Twitter. “Either the matter warranted investigation long ago and he did nothing, or he’s seen the facts and believes nothing is wrong. His belated referral to the IG is not news… it is a ruse.”

A group of conservative House Republicans that includes Meadows plan to offer a resolution today detailing alleged misconduct at the “highest levels” of the Justice Department and FBI and calling for appointment of a second special counsel.

Trump’s demand to the Justice Department marked the first time since firing FBI Director James Comey last year that the president has sought to use the power of his office to counter the Russia investigation. There’s no evidence that the FBI installed an informant or spy in Trump’s campaign, though the bureau did rely on an informant who was in contact with Trump associates, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The use of informants is routine in law enforcement investigations, even in their preliminary stages.

Many details about the source remain murky, and it is

not precisely clear what GOP lawmakers are requesting or why their requests are of such concern to the Justice Department. The source, a longtime U.S. intelligence asset, is a retired American professor who made contact with three of Trump’s advisers during the campaign.

In the summer of 2016, he met with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis for coffee in northern Virginia, offering to provide foreign policy expertise to the Trump team. In September of that year, he reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper. He also had multiple contacts with foreign policy adviser Carter Page for talks about foreign policy.

The Washington Post is not naming the professor because it generally does not do so in cases of confidential intelligence assets.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has complained that the Justice Department and Rosenstein specifically have stonewalled him on requests for documents related to the Russia probe, including details of the FBI’s use of an informant. Trump has sympathized with Nunes in tweets, and called him “a very courageous man” in a speech Monday at the CIA to mark the swearing-in of its new director Gina Haspel.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley last week sent Rosenstein a letter demanding an unredacted memo from last August outlining the scope and reasons for Mueller’s investigation. The letter also directed Rosenstein to answer many questions about his handling of the matter.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote Rosenstein on Monday asking that he continue to protect the Mueller investigation and rebuking Grassley for trying to obtain sensitive information about an ongoing probe.

“Congress should respect the need for secrecy during ongoing investigations and prosecutions and work with, not against, the department to ensure that information is protected,” she wrote. Information for this article was contributed by Justin Sink, Chris Strohm, Steven T. Dennis, Erik Wasson and Billy House of Bloomberg News; by Seung Min Kim, Matt Zapotosky, Rosalind S. Helderman and Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post; and by Desmond Butler, Chad Day, Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Eric Tucker, Darlene Superville and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press.