There's your Russia collusion.
Posted on 09/22/2017 8:47:24 AM PDT by CaptainK
A Republican senator wants to know whether the FBI warned the Trump campaign about Russian attempts to infiltrate the campaign.
Bombshell revelations this week about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are what prompted the inquiry, made by the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In a letter to Wray, Grassley asks whether the FBI ever provided a “defensive briefing” or any other warnings about “attempts to infiltrate the campaign by people connected with, or compromised by, Russian intelligence.”
“Such a briefing allows innocent, unwitting organizations and individuals to take defensive action to protect themselves,” Grassley wrote to Wray.
Several reports have come out this week about Manafort, a longtime Republican political consultant. CNN reported on Monday that U.S. investigators were conducting surveillance on Manafort before and after the presidential election. The surveillance picked up Manafort discussing the campaign with Russian operatives.
Investigators obtained a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Manafort just after he left the Trump campaign in August, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that just after joining the Trump team last April, Manafort sent emails offering to provide a “private briefing” about the state of the campaign to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely connected to Vladimir Putin.
Manafort has business ties to Deripaska that stretch back over a decade. The two were recently involved in a dispute over unpaid debts. Manafort’s emails, which were sent from his campaign address, suggested that he sought to use his campaign position to settle the financial dispute.
Manafort’s activities raise the question “of whether the FBI ever alerted Mr. Trump to the FBI’s counter-intelligence concerns regarding his campaign manager and others associated with the campaign,” Grassley writes in his letter to Wray.
Grassley asserted that the FBI often uses defensive briefings to “thwart attempts by foreign intelligence services to infiltrate organizations or compromise U.S. citizens.”
The Iowa Republican also noted that Manafort has been at the center of one such defensive briefing.
He pointed to a report out earlier this year that in 2008, U.S. intelligence raised concerns about Manafort’s foreign consulting work to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Manafort’s business partner, Rick Davis, was McCain’s campaign manager. At the time, Manafort and Davis were working on behalf of then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The business partners also arranged two meetings between McCain and Deripaska, the Russian oligarch who Manafort offered to brief last year.
Grassley told Wray that the circumstances that prompted a defensive briefing to McCain’s campaign about Manafort’s work “seem substantially similar” to the situation surrounding the Trump campaign.
Grassley says that any warning by the FBI to the Trump campaign would raise the question of how the Trump team responded.
“On the other hand, if the FBI did not alert the campaign, then that would raise serious questions about what factors contributed to its decision and why it appears to have been handled differently in a very similar circumstance involving a previous campaign,” writes Grassley.
Was the FBI forthcoming or were they trying to set up Trump?
Good questions.
I've got a better question ... and this might be what Senator Grassley is indirectly trying to get out in the open:
Did the FBI warn Trump about covert surveillance conducted against it by members of the Obama administration?
I've got a wild theory about why nobody in the Obama administration is going to face any legal repercussions over this disaster, and it would be one of the most remarkable stories in modern history if it's true. I've been pretty close to the truth on most of what has come out since the "wiretapping" story first broke in January, but there are still a few loose ends that haven't been resolved.
Let's see how this story plays out before I go too far down this road!
Be interesting to see IF and HOW these questions are answered.
...Bombshell revelations this week about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort...
What revelations were those?
Sessions should appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Mueller for the felonious leaking of information to CNN about FISA court proceedings. FBI should do an armed, pre-dawn raid of Mueller’s home and fondle his wife just like was done to Manafort.
It says they alerted McCain". Or was that part of him being on one of the security committees which means many were alerted.
So now, the question makes no sense.
First we heard of it.
Who is trying to twist this?
obvious set up.
by whom?
mccain 2008 taught him the script.
his involvement in 2016 comes from him knowing the same characters & escalating it into what became known as the russian dossier on trump that johnny mc hand carried to comey.
There's your Russia collusion.
This is horsecrap. A report from 2008 ?
Everything has to go back to Obama and his itel agencies.
It’s his FBI we’re talking about.
It’s his admin that supposedly knew about Russians ( doing what ? they still don’t know) and interference long before Trump was player, and did nothing.
Time for The POTUS to have a Saturday Night Massacre.
bttt
What a disappointment he’s been as AG. I’m afraid he has things to hide in his political closet along with some of his old senate buddies he’s protecting.
Why would the now highly politicized FBI want to do ANYTHING to help Donald Trump in any way? They were in the pockets of the liberal Democrats and their monied plutocrat donors long ago.
The most amazing aspect of all this, one that stands out above all others, is that in spite of all this HUGE counterinsurgency movement by the mobilized and motivated denizens of the Washington Swamp, Donald Trump was STILL declared to be President on November 9, 2016.
The FBI has been in CYA mode ever since.
These things must be done - delicately. And somebody is swinging a sledgehammer.
May you live in interesting times.
these are very good questions...I would bet they didn’t warn Trump at all...mainly because there was nothing to warn about....until he won and the russia Russia Russia fake story was concocted
The AJ’s job is chiefly behind closed doors until something is ready for disposition. He has stepped to the podium on several occasions when a decision has been made....USSC on immigration, Sanctuary Cities etc etc.
How about asking Comey about his involvement first?
The FBI is becoming just the Stasi for the Democrat party.
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