Where once a presidency seemed to depend on what the meaning of “is” is, 20 years later one may rest on the meaning of “spy.”
President Trump has rebranded the investigation into possible collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russian meddlers “Spygate” after it was revealed that FBI tasked one Stefan Halper with contacting campaign advisers Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos, dismissing alternative explanations as a failed attempt to sound “less sinister.”
To Trump, this suggested nefarious motives on the part of the Democratic administration and “deep state” FBI. His campaign, he argued, was the target of surveillance and spying on the orders of political opponents.
“Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president,” Trump tweeted after the first news stories emerged. “It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a ‘hot’ Fake News story. If true — all time biggest political scandal!”
It is, however, highly debatable whether this was done “for political purposes,” as opposed to for the purpose of investigating collusion and Russian interference. Similarly, Halper and anyone engaged in similar activities on the FBI’s behalf could be more properly described as informants rather than Trump’s preferred nomenclature “spy.”
“They were spying on, a term I don’t particularly like, but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage or influence which is what they do,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a television interview last week.
Clapper said Trump should have welcomed this kind of help. Trump took this as an admission of spying.
The New York Times headlined its May 18 story on the matter, “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.”
The president has long insisted Trump Tower was wiretapped during the campaign, perhaps with the Obama administration’s authorization. He has been loose in his talk, and some of his television surrogates have been looser.
Yet the Halper news does somewhat alter the public’s understanding of the Trump-Russia investigation’s origins. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe has been shrouded in secrecy, with lawmakers and at least one federal judge complaining they don’t know enough about its mandate or scope.
After the Justice Department was prodded to give a federal judge access to an unredacted copy of the August 2, 2017 memo setting Mueller’s parameters, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded to see it as well.
“This committee likewise should be permitted to review the true nature and scope of the special counsel’s investigation,” Grassley wrote in a letter earlier this month to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “It is unclear precisely how, or whether, the Department is following its own regulations, what the actual bounds of Mr. Mueller’s authority are, and how those bounds have been established.”
“The public, as well as Congress, only learned a fraction of the investigation’s actual scope in April 2018 — nearly a year after Mr. Mueller’s appointment — when he filed a heavily redacted copy of the August memorandum in federal court,” Grassley also wrote.
Unfulfilled requests for documents by the committees chaired by Reps. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., triggered last week’s White House meetings between those lawmakers — and also the “gang of eight”— and top federal intelligence and law enforcement officials.
Meanwhile, former law enforcement and intelligence officials — think Clapper, fired FBI Director James Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan — have not exactly sounded dispassionate toward Trump.
“What I want from Rod, from the FBI, from everybody — we want transparency,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
One top Democrat present for a briefing, California Rep. Adam Schiff, who is Nunes’ counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, said afterward they produced no evidence of a Trump campaign spy.
That could be a matter of interpretation — of definition. Trump’s take isn’t so subtle.
“This whole Russia Probe is Rigged,” he tweeted Saturday. “Just an excuse as to why the Dems and Crooked Hillary lost the Election and States that haven’t been lost in decades.”
Trump concluded his Twitter missive with the hashtag “Spygate.”
