Prodded by Trump, FBI to look into complaint about its 2016 tactics

May 22, 2018  01H:22  GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Rachel Rubin and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Washington

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department agreed on Monday to investigate “any irregularities” in FBI tactics related to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign after Trump questioned whether an FBI informant had been planted into his political organization.

Trump suggested on Friday that the FBI might have planted or recruited an informant in his presidential campaign for political purposes, citing unidentified reports that at least one FBI representative was “implanted.”

The agreement came during a meeting that Trump had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

The Justice Department “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 in a statement.

The White House will set up a meeting with the FBI, the Justice Department and the intelligence community to let congressional leaders review classified information related to Trump’s accusations, Sanders said.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called the plan to review classified information highly inappropriate and said if such a meeting takes place, it must include Democrats, not just Republicans, as a “check on the disturbing tendency of the president’s allies to distort facts and undermine the investigation and the people conducting it.”

Federal investigators are probing whether anyone in the Trump campaign worked with Russia to sway the election to the Republican candidate. Trump has denied any collusion and repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

Trump said in a Twitter post on Sunday that he would demand the Justice Department look into whether the FBI “infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Hours later, a spokeswoman said the department asked its inspector general to expand a review of the process for requesting surveillance warrants to include determining whether there was impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its investigation.The FBI was looking into Trump election campaign ties to Moscow before Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the probe a year ago.

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Rosenstein said in a statement on Sunday evening.

Democrats said Mueller and his investigation should be protected and information, such as about any informant, should not be shared with Congress.

Justice Department “regulations protect this type of information from disclosure to Congress for legitimate investigative and privacy reasons,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a letter to Rosenstein on Monday.

Trump has shown increasing signs of impatience with the investigation led by Mueller as it enters its second year, saying it was politically motivated and had its roots in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein departs the West Wing of the White House after a meeting on FBI investigations into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

His Republican allies in Congress, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, have pushed the same message.

In March, the Justice Department’s inspector general launched a review into allegations by Republican lawmakers that the FBI made serious missteps when it sought a warrant to monitor a former adviser to Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his review will examine whether the FBI and Justice Department followed proper procedures when they applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly conduct surveillance on former adviser Carter Page and his ties to Russia.

Republican U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin said he and 16 other members of Congress will introduce a resolution on Tuesday alleging Justice Department and FBI misconduct involving surveillance in the Trump-Russia probe.

Neither Trump nor his new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, provided any evidence of government infiltration into Trump’s presidential campaign.

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The New York Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the FBI sent an informant to talk to two Trump campaign advisers, Page and George Papadopoulos, after the agency received evidence that the two men had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last fall to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia.

Sources contradict Sessions' testimony he opposed Russia outreach

March 19, 2018  08H:09  GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Suzanne Gould and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Washington DC

WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told us at Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.

Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.

“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 14, when asked whether he shut down Papadopoulos’ proposed outreach to Russia.

Sessions has since also been interviewed by Mueller.

Three people who attended the March campaign meeting told Reuters they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’ idea.

One person said Sessions was courteous to Papadopoulos and said something to the effect of “okay, interesting.”

The other two recalled a similar response.

“It was almost like, ‘Well, thank you and let’s move on to the next person,’” one said.

However, another meeting attendee, J.D. Gordon, who was the Trump campaign’s director of national security, told media outlets including us at Reuters in November that Sessions strongly opposed Papadopoulos’ proposal and said no one should speak of it again. In response to a request for comment, Gordon said on Saturday that he stood by his statement.

Sessions, through Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores, declined to comment beyond his prior testimony. The special counsel’s office also declined to comment. Spokeswomen for the Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee did not comment.

Reuters was unable to determine whether Mueller is probing discrepancies in accounts of the March 2016 meeting.

The three accounts, which have not been reported, raise new questions about Sessions’ testimony regarding contacts with Russia during the campaign.

Sessions previously failed to disclose to Congress meetings he had with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and testified in October that he was not aware of any campaign representatives communicating with Russians.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Some Democrats have seized on discrepancies in Sessions’ testimony to suggest the attorney general may have committed perjury. A criminal charge would require showing Sessions intended to deceive. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he had always told the truth and testified to the best of his recollection.

Legal experts expressed mixed views about the significance of the contradictions cited by the three sources.

Sessions could argue he misremembered events or perceived his response in a different way, making any contradictions unintentional, some experts said.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Sessions’ words might be too vague to form the basis of a perjury case because there could be different interpretations of what he meant.

United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions visits families of opioid overdose victims at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, U.S. March 15, 2018. REUTERS/John Sommers II

“If you’re talking about false statements, prosecutors look for something that is concrete and clear,” he said.

Other legal experts said, however, that repeated misstatements by Sessions could enable prosecutors to build a perjury case against him.

“Proving there was intent to lie is a heavy burden for the prosecution. But now you have multiple places where Sessions has arguably made false statements,” said Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor.

The March 2016 campaign meeting in Washington was memorialized in a photo Trump posted on Instagram of roughly a dozen men sitting around a table, including Trump, Sessions and Papadopoulos.

Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his Russia contacts, is now cooperating with Mueller.

According to court documents released after his guilty plea, Papadopoulos said at the campaign meeting that he had connections who could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Papadopoulos continued to pursue Russian contacts after the March 2016 meeting and communicated with some campaign officials about his efforts, according to the court documents.

Trump has said that he does not remember much of what happened at the “very unimportant” campaign meeting. Trump has said he did not meet Putin before becoming president.

Moscow has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia.