President Donald Trump said he expects “total transparency” from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the FBI regarding documents related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“I want total transparency” on documents Republican members of Congress have demanded, Trump told reporters as he left the White House on Wednesday. The records include the name of an informant the FBI used as it opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign in 2016. “From Rod, from the FBI, from everybody,” he said.
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy will meet Thursday with FBI Director Christopher Wray and a senior Justice Department official to review records related to Mueller’s investigation. The meeting was organized by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly -- who doesn’t plan to participate -- after Trump met with Rosenstein, Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on Monday to discuss the congressional demands.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that Democrats weren’t invited to the meeting because they hadn’t requested the records. The House and Senate Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, called the meeting “completely improper” in a letter to Wray and Rosenstein on Wednesday and said the Justice Department should instead arrange a briefing for congressional leaders of both parties.
“We urge you to reconsider holding this meeting,” the Democrats said in the letter.
“However, if you have determined in your best judgment that Justice Department participation in the meeting is the only way to prevent this situation from devolving into an outright constitutional crisis, then we believe you must insist on” the bipartisan briefing, they wrote, calling it “the only appropriate mechanism for highly sensitive briefings that might implicate intelligence sources and methods.”
Republican Senators Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn, meanwhile, wrote Kelly and Rosenstein on Tuesday asking to be included in the meeting.
Trump again attacked Mueller’s probe on Wednesday, declaring “WITCH HUNT!” in a tweet, and late Tuesday issued a pair of tweets that accused former President Barack Obama of planting a “spy” in his presidential campaign. Trump cited no evidence to support the claim; last year he accused Obama of wiretapping his campaign, also without ever producing evidence.
Rosenstein defended his department in remarks at an event in New York hosted by Bloomberg Law on Wednesday.
“One of the things that sometimes gets lost in the endless commentary about law enforcement is that some of the most patriotic and public-spirited American citizens work in the Department of Justice,” he said.
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