Trump: I’d ‘want to hear’ foreign dirt

Comments come after he pledged not to use info stolen by adversaries in 2020 campaign

Washington — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that if a foreign power offered dirt on his 2020 opponent, he’d be open to accepting it and that he’d have no obligation to call in the FBI.

“I think I’d want to hear it,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News, adding, “There’s nothing wrong with listening.”

The role of Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., in organizing a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer offering negative information on Hillary Clinton was a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the last presidential campaign.

Mueller painstakingly documented Russian efforts to boost Trump’s campaign and undermine that of his Democratic rival. But while Mueller’s investigation didn’t establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s campaign, Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks in 2016 and celebrated information exposed by Russian hackers.

Several of Trump’s Democratic opponents in the 2020 race, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand, repeated their calls to begin impeachment hearings in the wake of the president’s latest remarks.

Trump’s comments came just a month after he pledged not to use information stolen by foreign adversaries in his 2020 re-election campaign, even as he wrongly insisted he hadn’t used such information to his benefit in 2016.

During a question-and-answer session with reporters in the Oval Office in May, Trump said he “would certainly agree to” that commitment.

Trump also insisted erroneously that he “never did use, as you probably know,” such information, adding: “That’s what the Mueller report was all about. They said no collusion.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers that Donald Trump Jr. should have called his agency to report the offer.

But Trump, who nominated Wray to the role in 2017, told ABC News that he disagrees. “The FBI director is wrong,” the president said. He added, “Life doesn’t work like that.”