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By Hunter Daily Kos Staff
After the news that counterintelligence efforts against Russian hackers included sending an informant to make contact with Trump campaign advisers whose Russian ties were under investigation, during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump is now "hereby" ordering his Department of Justice to investigate that counterintelligence effort.
Donald J. Trump" @realDonaldTrump
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!
The alleged informant, who is described by the New York Times as an "American academic who teaches in Britain," made contact after campaign adviser George Papadopoulous bragged to others that Moscow had gathered "thousands of emails" that would be compromising to opponent Hillary Clinton -- long before those emails were eventually made public. That admission is among the strongest currently public ties between the Russian hacking effort and members of the Trump presidential campaign.
That Trump knows of the informant is due to the actions of House Republican Devin Nunes and his allies, who have been emphatic that the Department of Justice turn over top secret information about the investigation -- information which reliably leaked into the public sphere, and to Trump himself, soon afterwards. Trump is now ordering the department to launch an investigation into the FBI's probe of Russian influence.
Previously, Donald Trump fired the director of the FBI after asking multiple members of the government to curtail their investigation of Trump adviser Michael Flynn. That Trump is willing to "officially" demand interference into the investigation of several other members of his campaign team's contacts with Russian intelligence figures suggests similar motive; the sitting president seeks to sabotage the investigation into campaign collusion with a foreign intelligence service.
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