White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that the Justice Department had asked its inspector general to expand an inquiry into the FBI “[b]ased on the meeting with the President.”
Sanders also said White House chief of staff John Kelly would “set up a meeting” with three agencies whose leadership met with the President Monday, the Department of Justice (represented by its deputy director, Rod Rosenstein), FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.”
Read Sanders’ full statement below:
“Based on the meeting with the President, the Department of Justice has asked the Inspector General to expand its current investigation to include any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump Campaign. It was also agreed that White House Chief of Staff Kelly will immediately set up a meeting with the FBI, DOJ, and DNI together with Congressional Leaders to review highly classified and other information they have requested.”
So I guess everyone still has their jobs.
Including, sadly, Trump.
Well, the week is still young …
Okay, so when will someone with any credibility whatsoever weigh in?
Whoopdy-doo what SHS says. She lies out of so many sides of her mouth that I think her mouth must be four-dimensional.
This IS worse than Watergate, but just not in the way Trump thinks it is.
Our system of government is failing.
The betting line on whether this is going to end well for anyone on this is closed. The only one remaining is the over/under on number of weeks until the **** hits the fan, and this makes me think that number is falling rapidly even despite the DAG’s best efforts
What to make of this?
My take: There is no new investigation. It gets folded into the OIG investigation which has already validated Comey’s actions with respect to the Russia inquiry. That there will be so many people getting access to the highly classified info means Trump/Nunes can’t cherry pick without getting outed or checked. If Democrats are involved as part of the Congressional Leadership (e.g., Feinstein/Warner) that would also be good. Nunes would be at risk if he leaked info (which he will).
While all of this is highly irregular and inappropriate, my sense is that Trump blinked here by not demanding a brand new investigation to essentially e-ghazi the entire FBI. This should buy the time the Democrats and Mueller need. For the Dems, rolling out the anti-corruption/pro-accountability angle may have tempered Trump here. They should run hard on this issue because it will keep Trump in his box between now and election day while also scooping up every corrupt GOP office holder and provide a focal point for people to vent their frustration at the corruption from the cabinet members at EPA, HUD, Education etc. For Mueller, Rosenstein bought time for him to keep plugging away. Some key pieces information that were relevant to starting the investigation was already revealed by Nunes (e.g., Papadopoulos). Other info will be much more incriminating against Trump, and so some GOPers not named Nunes will want to exercise restraint. I notice when I engaged with the Trump Bots that they got defensive when I pushed the Papado angle and the independent basis for the FBI investigation. They’re hung up on the dossier but the force behind their arguments is weak.