Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
End probe, president urges again
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tried to cast fresh doubt Monday on the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, demanding an immediate end to the “Witch Hunt.”
Trump also said former campaign adviser Carter Page, the subject of government documents released over the weekend, wasn’t a spy or an agent of Russia.
“Carter Page wasn’t a spy, wasn’t an agent of the Russians - he would have cooperated with the FBI. It was a fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump,” the president said in a series of tweets quoting Tom Fitton, president of the conservative activist group Judicial Watch. Fitton was interviewed Monday on Fox and Friends.
“A disgrace to America,” Trump’s tweet continued, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. “They should drop the
discredited Mueller Witch Hunt now!”
The president was responding to the Justice Department’s Saturday release of documents related to the wiretapping of Page. Trump has asserted that the documents, heavily redacted and released under the Freedom of Information Act, “confirm with little doubt” that intelligence agencies misled a special court that approved the wiretap warrant.
But lawmakers from both political parties said the documents don’t show wrongdoing and that they even appear to undermine some previous claims by top Republicans on the basis for obtaining a warrant against Page, who denies being a foreign agent.
Top Republicans have accused the FBI of relying too much on a dossier produced by British spy Christopher Steele, which they painted as politically motivated and uncorroborated.
However, in its application to surveil Page, the FBI disclosed to the court that his work was on behalf of a client who was possibly looking for politically damaging information about Trump, but that agents still found the information credible.
Democrats argue that the surveillance application relied on more information than what Steele provided. And they note that Steele had been a reliable source of information to the FBI in the past.
Portions of the documents show the FBI telling the court that Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.” The agency also told the court that “the FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.”
Much of the more than 400 pages of documents is redacted, making it impossible to know all the evidence that the FBI presented to a judge in seeking the wiretap order.
In Monday’s tweets, Trump quoted Fitton as saying the FBI had classified the documents to “cover up misconduct.”
Trump tweeted Sunday night that President Barack Obama knew about Russian meddling before the 2016 election, but didn’t tell the Trump campaign “because it is all a big hoax.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that Trump was “obviously” referring to allegations of collusion between members of his presidential campaign and Russian agents.
After a summit last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said that he accepts the findings of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia sought to sabotage the U.S. election in 2016. But he denies that his campaign coordinated with Russia.
“Obviously the president is talking about the collusion with his campaign,” Sanders said. “He’s been very clear that there wasn’t any. I think he’s said it about a thousand times.”
Mueller is investigating whether there was any collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Two Trump associates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty last year to charges brought by Mueller alleging they had lied to the FBI about their Russia contacts.
The documents released over the weekend were part of intelligence officials’ application for a warrant to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Page has not been charged with a crime, but he has been interviewed by the FBI and congressional investigators about his ties to Russia. White House officials have argued that Page, announced by the president in early 2016 as a foreign policy adviser, played only a minor role in the Trump campaign.
In his tweets Monday, Trump also criticized the media for coverage of his summit with Putin in Helsinki.
Much of the coverage in the week since the summit has focused on Trump’s refusal to confront Putin more aggressively about election interference and how little has been disclosed about what the two leaders discussed during a private meeting that lasted more than two hours.
“When you hear the Fake News talking negatively about my meeting with President Putin, and all that I gave up, remember, I gave up NOTHING, we merely talked about future benefits for both countries,” Trump tweeted. “Also, we got along very well, which is a good thing, except for the Corrupt Media!”
Trump also said he’s “very happy” with the pace of efforts to denuclearize North Korea, despite leader Kim Jong Un having taken no major steps toward that aim since their summit in Singapore last month.
“A Rocket has not been launched by North Korea in 9 months,” Trump tweeted. “Likewise, no Nuclear Tests. Japan is happy, all of Asia is happy. But the Fake News is saying, without ever asking me (always anonymous sources), that I am angry because it is not going fast enough. Wrong, very happy!”
The Washington Post had reported that Trump was privately frustrated that Kim was slow-walking on giving up nuclear weapons.