Nation: Trump demands probe into whether feds ‘infiltrated’ campaign.
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Sunday that he will demand that the Justice Department open an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his presidential campaign, an extraordinary order that came hours before his legal team said that the special counsel indicated its investigation into the president could be concluded by September.
Trump tweeted: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DO J infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”
Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department — it asked its watchdog later Sunday to expand an existing probe of FBI actions — reached a new intensity with the demand and came amid a White House strategy to combat the threat posed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. The president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said Mueller recently shared a timetable that suggested that its probe could end by Sept. 1 if Trump were to sit for an interview in July, which is the legal team’s new working plan.
“We said to them, ‘If we’re going to be interviewed in July, how much time until the report gets issued?’ ” Giuliani said Sunday, referring to the report Mueller is expected to issue to Congress at the conclusion of his investigation. “They said September, which is good for everyone, because no one wants this to drag into the midterms.”
Giuliani said he did not want a repeat of what happened in 2016, when FBI Director James Comey announced in the campaign’s final days that he was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, a decision Democrats believe cost Clinton the race. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, also said that Mueller’s team indicated that the entire probe could end by September, not just its investigation into potential obstruction of justice.
“This would be the culmination of the investigation into the president,” Giuliani said.
It is not certain whether Trump will sit for an interview with Mueller, though the president has said he would. Giuliani said a decision on that would not be made until after Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, which is slated for June 12.
In response to Trump’s demand, the Justice Department asked its inspector general Sunday to expand an existing investigation into the Russia probe by examining whether there was any improper politically motivated surveillance.
It was not immediately clear whether that move would satisfy Trump.