The week that Donald Trump officially passed the one-month mark of his presidency largely passed relatively calmly–at least by Trumpian standards. But what most people don’t know is that during that same period, Trump was caught in a whopper of a lie–er, alternative fact–once again. And he tried to get the FBI to cover it up.
Last week, the White House was sent scrambling by reports that a number of top Trump campaign aides–including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort–were in contact with Russian officials for much of the campaign. In his now-infamous train wreck press conference last Thursday, Trump adamantly denied that anyone on his team was in contact with the Kremlin. But as both The New York Times and The Independent discovered, at least two Russian officials have been on record for some time as saying that there was indeed communication between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Two days after the election, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Rybakov said that his government had been in contact with several members of the Donald’s “immediate entourage” for much of the campaign season. More seriously, earlier this month, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, told The Washington Post that he’d frequently chatted with now-former national security adviser Michael Flynn during the campaign. That means their contacts dated long before their now-infamous Christmas exchange in which Flynn is suspected of discussing American sanctions on Russia.
Publicly, the Trump camp dismissed it as a nonstory. But CNN discovered that privately, the news sent Trump and friends into a panic. How do we know? Because they tried to do what only a really panicky White House would do.
You may recall that on Sunday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus loudly denied that there had been any contacts between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. However, CNN reported that before then, he asked FBI director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe to publicly deny that there had been any contacts. But according to a number of officials close to the situation, Comey turned it down cold because those contacts are the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation.
The story broke on Thursday’s edition of “The Situation Room.” Watch here.
FBI refused White House request to knock down recent Trump-Russia stories https://t.co/LA3gTvU69D https://t.co/9BROykSlkG
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) February 23, 2017
Wait a minute. If this is a nonstory, then why was the White House scrambling to get the FBI to deny there had been any contacts? Could we be seeing the first domino starting to tip over? We’ll have to wait and see.
(featured image courtesy DonkeyHotey, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
