After President Trump abruptly fired former FBI Director James Comey, several top FBI officials met to discuss whether Trump was behaving in what appeared to be “at the behest” of Russia before it launched its investigation, CNN reported Monday.
According to transcripts of interviews between two FBI officials and House investigators obtained by CNN, the officials debated a “range” of “extremes” before the probe into whether Trump was working for Russia commenced.
The group of officials discussed whether Trump was “acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing (Russia’s) will. That was one extreme,” then-FBI counsel James Baker told House investigators last year, according to the transcript.
“The other extreme is that the President is completely innocent, and we discussed that too,” he said. “There’s a range of things this could possibly be. We need to investigate, because we don’t know whether, you know, the worst-case scenario is possibly true or the President is totally innocent and we need to get this thing over with — and so he can move forward with his agenda.”
A transcript of an interview with former FBI attorney Lisa Page also reveals that officials had discussed starting a probe into Trump’s behavior before he fired Comey, according to CNN.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that the FBI looked into whether Trump was working for Russia in the early days of his presidency.
The extremes of how much kompromat Russia has on Donnie vs. how much money Donnie owes Russians vs. Donnie’s collusion in hijacking the election?
Those extremes?
They were talking about the President of the United States, fer chris’sake. Unbelievable.
[edited. thanks, @musgrove]
No, at that time they were talking about the POTUS, so even worse.
Slightly OT, but I about died when I saw this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKmi31lRp48There is a weird, dangerous, asynchrony between what any reasonable and well-informed bystander (TPM person) perceives; what the NYT reports as breaking news; and what the GOP, basically a fascist party at this point, is prepared to admit. For those of us in the first category, the last three years have been a slow motion nightmare in which a plainly compromised rightwing idiot has obviously been receiving and implementing instructions from Russia, while the media slowly catches up with it about six months late, and the GOP scandalously denies it to the last and even jumps on board the treason train, with senators visiting Russia etc. It’s been an extraordinary and horrible experience: watching a dark chapter of history unfold with almost nothing to be done about it, even by our Democrats and our FBI and our press. In November, we finally got our say, and turned out in historic numbers; and since then we’ve had to stand by for an agonizing couple of months to get power, and still nightmare continues, with press reports like this one blowing up for 24 hours then been dispatched into the past–while the present continues to be dominated by the Republican fascists, who won’t even open the government until they get their way. Anyhow, good morning everyone.