Rep. Trey Gowdy, of Benghazi fame, took a stand against Donald Trump’s “spygate” conspiracy theory that is his latest effort to undermine the Russia investigation. Fox’s own Judge Andrew Napolitano agreed with Gowdy.
On Tuesday evening, Gowdy told Fox’s Martha MacCallum that there was nothing untoward about an FBI informant talking to a Trump campaign adviser out of concern for Russian interference during the 2016 campaign.
GOWDY: But remember, Martha, it was President Trump, himself who said, number one, “I didn’t collude with the Russia but if anyone connected with my campaign did, I want the FBI to find that out.” It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said I want you to do, find it out.
MacCallum responded with a Trump-friendly talking point: “If that were the case, why didn’t they give him a little briefing?” she asked.
FACT CHECK: MacCallum is either shamefully ignorant or she was lying. Trump was briefed on Russia's efforts and his campaign had failed to report the numerous contacts between his advisers and the Russians.
Shortly after he became the Republican nominee in 2016, Trump himself received a “high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials,” according to NBC News, that Russia would try to infiltrate or spy on his campaign. Hillary Clinton received a similar briefing.
[…]
Both he and Clinton were asked to report any “suspicious overtures” to their campaign. According to the Moscow Project, “at least 22 high-level campaign officials and Trump advisors were aware of contacts between the Trump team and Russia” — and the campaign did not report any of the 70-plus contacts these advisers had with Russians.
Gowdy said he didn’t know why Trump wasn’t briefed but that he is not and has not been the target of the investigation. Gowdy later said, “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got. And that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”
Next on the show was Napolitano. He told MacCallum that he and Gowdy are “buddies” and that they had previously discussed the matter. Napolitano called Gowdy “the perfect person to talk to about this because he’s seen a lot of things that the rest of us have not seen.”
Then Napolitano doubled down on Gowdy’s message:
NAPOLITANO: But the allegations by Mayor Giuliani over weekend which would lead us to believe that the Trump people think that the FBI had an undercover agent who inveigled his way into the campaign, and was there as a spy on the campaign seem to be baseless, there’s no evidence for that whatsoever.
[…]
The other allegation, about this professor whose name we’re not supposed to mention, talking to people on the periphery of the campaign that is standard operating procedure in intelligence gathering, and in criminal investigations.
Any legitimate host who had just been told that Trump’s talking point was baloney by two credible guests would have explored what Trump may have been up to in promoting the falsehood. But not MacCallum! She tripled down on her own falsehood, that Trump had not known about the investigation. And she did Trump the extra favor of criticizing the FBI for not doing what it actually did.
MACCALLUM: All right. But obviously, that the president is concerned about the existence of that person. He feels like there was someone spying on the campaign. And you know, it just goes back to the other question about if that were the case, and the president said I want to know if anybody’s working with Russia, why would—why was he not sort of clued into that and he talked about that in a tweet over this weekend. Should he have been?
Like Gowdy, Napolitano somehow didn’t know or forgot that Trump had been told. But he noted that the FBI may have had legitimate reasons for not telling Trump.
NAPOLITANO: In my opinion, yes. But quite frankly, that’s a judgment call. Sometimes you don’t want to tell people that you are worried about whether or not their organization has been invaded so to speak because you don’t want that word to get out there, and you don’t want it to affect the - -
Sadly, despite all this, Trump TV continued promoting the disgraceful “spygate” propaganda.
Watch Gowdy and Napolitano debunk Trump’s lies below, from the May 29, 2018 The Story with Martha MacCallum.
(Transcript excerpts via FoxNews.com)