White House Press Secretary’s deputy Raj Shah told reporters today on Air Force One that President Trump’s lawyers have ok’d the White House plan to appoint a second special counsel to investigate the FBI and Justice Department for the FISA warrants House Intel Chair Devin Nunes smeared in his infamous memo hoax last week.
Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah told reporters that Trump's attorneys have already approved the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate the FBI and Justice Department's actions during the 2016 presidential campaign. https://t.co/wRxgxMy8Oh
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 5, 2018
Shah did not clarify if he meant Trump’s personal lawyers or White House lawyers, like White House Counsel Don McGahn, who has already proven he won’t aid and abet obstruction of justice, when he threatened to resign if Trump fired Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.
Shah added that the White House will, “allow for a legal review [of any memos, including the Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo], national security review led by the White House Counsel’s Office, and then within five days the president will make a decision about declassifying it.”
Of course, Trump’s whole rationale for the counter-investigation and the memo is to obstruct justice in Mueller’s Russia investigation against him.
Therefore, Trump will never agree to releasing the Democrats’ rebuttal memo, which clarifies the misleading, cherry-picked claims in the Republican memo designed to paint the FBI’s FISA warrant renewal against former Trump foreign policy advisor (and known Russian agent) Carter Page as politically motivated, despite the FBI’s having helped Trump get elected.
Trump was in favor of releasing the Nunes memo before he even saw it, so he never noticed that the memo disproves his claims.
The FBI renewed for a third or fourth time a FISA warrant to surveil Page, after he left the campaign, not while he worked there. The FBI had been surveilling Page on and off since 2013.
Furthermore, the Republicans’ memo insinuates that the investigation stems from British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s credible “pee tape” dossier, which was first funded by a Republican Trump opponent and then extended by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
However, FBI began investigating the Trump campaign — as a result of convicted Trump advisor George Papadopoulos’ drunken admissions of colluding with Russia — long before Steele even brought them his dossier.
By announcing that they intend to launch an investigation into their investigators, Trump and his Republican henchmen continue to undermine the democratic institutions that keep us safe and free and they dis-incentivize intelligence sharing from sources both foreign and domestic.
However, they also succeed in making themselves look guilty as sin, which they are.
The harder they fight, the more evidence they provide Mueller in his obstruction case against them.
May Mueller win and send them all where they belong.
Follow Lucia Brawley on Twitter and at luciabrawley.com.
