Despite their amnesia, the Trump team met with Kremlin contacts at least 30 times during the 2016 presidential campaign, 25 of those meetings taking place after Trump became the Republican nominee. They took those meetings despite repeated FBI warnings at the time that Russian officials would try to contact them and that they should report any such outreach to the bureau.
The president has repeatedly attacked the FBI for their investigation of collusion between his campaign and Russia, going so far as to fire its chief James Comey when he would not call off the probe. Trump also said that Russians did not interfere in the election at all — an unsubstantiated claim that directly contradicts the findings of 17 intelligence agencies.
Not taking kindly to such unprecedented slander from a president, the FBI has now revealed that the Trump campaign ignored their warnings, continued to meet with liaisons of Russian president Vladimir Putin, and never reported any of them.
Frank Montoya, a recently retired FBI counterintelligence agent and supervisor said that the bureau would have informed both Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, “If you see these kinds of contacts please let us know about them so we can keep you updated on the threat picture.”
However, the Trump campaign continued to meet with Russian officials uninhibitedly.
“If I give you a defensive briefing and the illicit behavior continues, I’m not going to just scratch my head over that, especially if I see continued interference,” added Montoya. “If we’re telling these guys stuff and they are not acting on it, then we’re going to keep that as evidence.”
Evidence of obstruction of justice continues to mount in former FBI chief Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigation.
According to NBC News:
Frank Figliuzzi, a former head of FBI counterintelligence and an NBC News analyst, said counterintelligence briefings ‘provide an opportunity for investigative subjects to be transparent with the bureau and to come back if such contacts are occurring because of admonishments by the bureau.’
If they fail to do that, he said, ‘a couple of factors could be at play: They didn’t spread the message to the rest of the team or there is some form of guilty conscience that prohibits them.’
Trump knows he’s guilty, although he and does not seem to have any conscience about it. With two members of his team, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos, convicted of lying to the FBI and cooperating with Mueller; former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort indicted on 12 counts, including conspiracy against the U.S.; and Mueller’s team questioning Trump’s closest White House aides and family members at long intervals; and Trump’s own lawyers next up on the docket, Trump finds himself increasingly cornered and is gathering his minions to try to discredit Mueller and the FBI.
The more the president and Republican congressmen fight the investigation, the more they obstruct justice. Meanwhile, the FBI leaking that Trump ignored their warnings about Russia is just a glimpse of the mountain of evidence they have up their sleeve to prove the president is a treasonous liar.
