Trump sought Australia’s help on Russia probe origins.
WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Attorney General William Barr gather information for a Justice Department inquiry that Trump hopes will discredit the Mueller investigation, according to two American officials with knowledge of the call.
The White House curbed access to a transcript of the call — which the president made at Barr’s request — to a small group of aides, one of the officials said. The restriction was unusual and similar to the handling of a July call with the Ukrainian president at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. Like that call, Trump’s discussion with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia shows the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests.
The discussion with Morrison also shows the extent to which Trump views the attorney general as a critical partner. The president is using federal law enforcement powers to aid his political prospects, settle scores with his perceived “deep state” enemies and show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt, partisan origins.
The Justice Department inquiry and a parallel but unconnected effort by the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani represent a kind of two-front war. Trump has said that Barr can help him validate his 2016 electoral victory and seems eager for Giuliani to help him in 2020 by trying to unearth damaging information about former Vice President Joe Biden.
Barr in recent months has asked the president to facilitate communications with foreign officials and has made at least one trip to Italy to secure cooperation for the Justice Department review, according to a department official. The review is examining U.S. intelligence and law enforcement activity around the Trump campaign and whether it was lawfully predicated.
Trump initiated the discussion with Morrison in recent weeks explicitly for the purpose of requesting Australia’s help in the review, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussion.
In making the request — one of many at Barr’s behest — Trump was in effect asking the Australian government to investigate itself. FBI counterintelligence investigators began examining any Trump ties to Russia’s 2016 election interference after Australian officials told the bureau that Russian intermediaries had made overtures to Trump advisers about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Australia’s top diplomat in Britain had met in London in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who revealed the Russian offer of dirt on Clinton.
Papadopoulos also said that he had heard from an academic named Joseph Mifsud that the Russians had “thousands” of Clinton’s emails. Mifsud, who was last seen working as a visiting professor in Rome, has disappeared. Trump allies including Giuliani have put forth an unsubstantiated claim that Western intelligence agencies planted Mifsud to trap Papadopoulos.
Barr met with Italian government officials Friday in Italy. A Justice Department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, would not say whether he discussed the election inquiry or Mifsud in those meetings.
“At Attorney General Barr’s request, the president has contacted other countries,” Kupec said, to ask for introductions to foreign officials for the Justice Department inquiry, which is being led by John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut.
As he did with Morrison, Trump told those leaders that the Justice Department planned to contact their own law enforcement agencies, a Justice Department official said.