Amid damaging revelations from the guilty plea of his former personal lawyer, President Trump responded with a threat to reveal information about the special prosecutor’s investigation.
Such bluster is a familiar Trump tactic. The right-wing The Daily Caller picked up on Trump’s intentions a couple of weeks ago. “Declassification, we’re looking at very seriously,” Trump told reporters in a press conference just before Attorney General Jeff Sessions was forced to resign
Last Wednesday Trump told the New York Post said he would declassify FISA warrant applications and other confidential documents from Robert Mueller’s investigation. He claimed the documents would expose efforts by the FBI, the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign to set him up.
A Familiar Story
Trump’s previous declassification orders have fascinated right-wing media and rallied the indignation of his supporters. But they have not exposed much FBI bias against him.
In February he ordered the declassification of the so-called Nunes memo. This four-page document, written by Rep. Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, purported to show that the FBI failed to disclose a key fact to the FISA court: that the Clinton campaign had paid for a report from British intelligence official Michael Steele that mentioned low-level campaign aid Carter Page.
Trump claimed the memo “totally vindicated” him. Without the underlying documents, the claim was impossible to judge.
In July and again in September Trump ordered release of the underlying documents namely a heavily redacted version of the FISA warrant for the surveillance of Page.
Declassifying information about an ongoing investigation was inappropriate but the extreme secrecy that surround the FISA courts invites suspicion, whether justified or not.
Writing in the Washington Post, former deputy CIA director John McLaughlin argued the release of the material would be Trump’s “most damaging attack so far on our judicial, law enforcement and intelligence systems.” This far-fetched claim proved groundless.
So did Trump’s claim that the warrant would prove FBI bias against him.
The document itself showed the FBI began investigating Page before Trump’s presidential campaign began. The Bureau disclosed the political nature of Steele’s report to the court, and it compiled dozens of pages of additional evidence against Page. And the warrants were approved by Republican-appointed judges.
Back in September MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out the Trump’s focus on the FISA warrant of a minor campaign official who never served in his administration was a tactic of “misdirection.”
So too with his latest threat to declassify.
