President Trump said Sunday that he is demanding that the Justice Department investigate whether the U.S. government infiltrated his 2016 campaign for political reasons.
“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ 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 tweeted.
I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2018
Within a few hours, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked the Justice Department’s inspector general Sunday to review whether there was improper politically motivated surveillance. “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” he said in a statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Following initial reports of an FBI informant linked to his campaign, Trump wrote on Twitter last week that it would be “bigger than Watergate” if there was an “embedded informant” on the campaign, and tweeted a quote that “Apparently the DOJ put a Spy in the Trump Campaign.”
Subsequent reporting indicated the informant was a Cambridge University professor, who was not embedded in the campaign but sought out meetings with campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, and with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis.
On Sunday, Trump aggressively denounced special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia as a “Witch Hunt” and wrote, “Republicans and real Americans should start getting tough on this Scam,” else they impact the 2018 midterms.
Frequent Trump critic Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on “Meet the Press” Sunday that he believed Trump knowingly spread false claims about a spy embedded on his campaign.
“This is part of a string of meritless allegations from the very beginning that ‘I was wiretapped in Trump Tower’, there is a vast unmasking conspiracy, the investigation began with the Christopher Steele dossier — all of which is was untrue, all of which … is designed to create this alternate reality for Trump supporters,” Schiff said.
But Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House intelligence Committee — of which Schiff is ranking member — took the opposite stance, saying there may in fact be multiple informants.
“We asked for specific documents that we have still not received from the Department of Justice,” Nunes said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “So they continue to leak out things about this informant, and we don’t know if there’s one informant or more informants because there’s so much out there now.”
Nunes earlier this month threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and later Rosenstein, in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department refused to provide additional documents on the Russia probe, including information on surveillance of the Trump campaign.
“All we’re asking for is, ‘Give us the documentation that you used to start this investigation,’” Nunes said Sunday.
Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday that “If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal. Only the release or review of documents that the House Intelligence Committee (also, Senate Judiciary) is asking for can give the conclusive answers.”
