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被FBI调查是否在为俄罗斯工作？特朗普彻底怒了
2019年01月13日 19:03 观察者网
[文/观察者网 奕含]
1月11日，《纽约时报》引述知情人士的话称，在时任FBI局长科米被解雇之后几天，FBI开启了针对特朗普是否秘密为俄罗斯工作、损害美国国家利益的调查，同时特朗普解雇科米的行为是否妨碍司法公正也在调查范围之内。
这篇报道引发轩然大波，此前“通俄门”对特朗普的怀疑是俄罗斯帮助特朗普赢得大选，而今“升级”为特朗普秘密为俄罗斯工作。这一消息令特朗普大为不满。当地时间12日，特朗普一连发布数条推特回怼。《纽约时报》称，特朗普表示此前不知道FBI对自己开展了反间谍调查，并对相关报道没有异议。
此前白宫发言人桑德斯也称，特朗普比其前任奥巴马对俄罗斯的态度要强硬得多。
科米被解雇后，FBI启动对特朗普调查
去年11月底，美国总统特朗普书面答复了特别检察官穆勒（Robert Mueller）的相关提问，此举被外界视为“通俄门”已接近得出最终结论。然而，时至今日，特朗普“通俄门”风波依然没有平息，相反大有愈演愈烈之势。
11日，《纽约时报》引述数名前执法部门官员及知情人士表示，在特朗普于2017年5月9日解雇科米后，FBI开启了针对特朗普是否秘密为俄罗斯工作并因此损害美国国家利益的调查。
由于调查会产生爆炸性影响，反情报调查人员必须考虑总统的自身行为是否对国家安全造成潜在威胁。他们还尝试确认，特朗普是有意“通俄”还是在俄方的影响下不知不觉坠入了陷阱。
此外，特朗普解雇科米的行为是否妨碍了司法公正也在调查范围之内。需要注意的是，这项调查已经属于犯罪调查的范畴。
“数名前执法部门官员在最近几周的采访中说，如果特朗普是因为阻止通俄门而解雇了FBI前负责人，那么这个行为可能涉及犯罪，同时也触及国家安全问题。”
知情人士还表示，早在2016年总统大选期间，FBI高级官员就已经对特朗普与俄罗斯的关系产生怀疑，但由于不太确定如何开展如此敏感且规模巨大的调查，于是推迟了开展调查的时间。
然而，随着特朗普解雇科米，并将解雇一事与“通俄门”调查联系在一起时，相关官员决心发起反情报调查。
特朗普怼回去
据《纽约时报》12日报道，特朗普在当地时间上午7点的两个小时内，在推特上对其对手和围绕该事件的调查发布一系列声明。
推文中，特朗普指责希拉里·克林顿在没有证据的情况下，向FBI撒谎。特朗普声称科米是腐败的，并且他是穆勒最好的朋友，而穆勒正聘请一票民主党人非要扳倒他。“这是特朗普对FBI又一误导性的指控，”《纽约时报》写道，特朗普周六表示，此前不知道FBI对自己开展了反间谍调查，并对《纽约时报》的报道没有异议。
2017年5月，时任联邦调查局局长的科米被特朗普解雇，当时科米正率领FBI对“通俄门”进行调查。在科米被解雇后，穆勒随后被责成带头调查俄罗斯疑似干涉美国2016年总统选举一事。目前尚不清楚穆勒是否仍在追究反间谍问题，没有任何公开证据表明特朗普本人与俄罗斯政府进行过密谋或接受指示。
12日，特朗普连发数推回应：
“喔！我刚从失败的《纽约时报》上获悉，在我开掉联邦调查局（FBI）前局长科米（James Comey）后，FBI前任领导人们在没有证据的情况下，无缘无故对我进行调查，这些人不是因有污点被解雇就是被迫离开，简直是彻头彻尾的人身攻击！”
特朗普还在推文中为自己解雇科米做了辩护，并对希拉里·克林顿进行指责：“搞笑……当‘心机（希拉）里’七月四号弄完她（指使的）那个调查（没记录、没宣誓），当她说啥都不知道以后，不管是共和党还是民主党都想让科米卷铺盖走人。”
《纽约时报》介绍说，特朗普明确表示，自己从一开始就认为任何此类调查都是非法的。在没有证据的情况下提出这个问题，是多年以来的阴谋，目的是取消他的总统任期。
“…联邦调查局处于完全混乱状态，科米的领导能力差，同时他在处理克林顿的事情上一塌糊涂（更不用说他从司法部篡夺权力）。 我解雇科米时对美国来说是美好的一天。他是一个不诚实的警察…”
《纽约时报》还提及，特朗普的上述推文与他的白宫发言人桑德斯周五晚发布的评论遥相呼应。当时桑德斯表示，“这很荒谬，科米被解雇是因为他是民主党雇佣来搞党派政治的刀笔吏，德鲁·麦卡贝（Andrew McCabe）是FBI解雇的骗子。与奥巴马采取让俄罗斯及其他外国对手推动美国发展不同，特朗普对俄罗斯的态度要强硬得多。”
除了发推文回怼，特朗普在周六晚上与福克斯新闻电话采访中，强烈否认他曾为俄罗斯秘密工作的说法，并将《纽约时报》的报道称为“侮辱”。
英国《卫报》援引福克斯新闻的采访内容称，特朗普说：
“这是有史以来最具侮辱性的文章，《纽约时报》的报道简直是灾难。他们说的太邪乎，以至于以前不相信的人现在都会相信。”
被解雇是出于阻止“通俄门”调查“特朗普和桑德斯的部分陈述与公共记录以及司法部检察官的报告结果不一致。”
《纽约时报》写道，民主党曾对科米非常不满，因为科米在总统竞选期间表达过对希拉里“邮件门”的不利言论，但当科米在调查特朗普“通俄门”一事时却被解职，也令民主党十分惊讶。
民主党方面对科米与希拉里“邮件门”一事表示愤怒，司法部检察长迈克尔·霍洛维茨（Michael E。 Horowitz）曾尖锐地批评科米在希拉里“邮件门”调查一事上存在过失，对FBI造成负面影响但并无证据显示科米存在政治偏见。
在科米被解雇后，麦卡贝（Andrew McCabe）曾代理FBI局长，后者于去年3月被解雇。对此，麦卡贝认为自己被解雇是出于政治动机，阻止自己进一步调查“通俄门”，之后科米团队的其他成员也被解雇或离开了FBI。
周六，科米在推特上引用了美国前总统富兰克林·罗斯福德一句话：我恳请你看看那些我所挑战过的敌人再来评判我。
报道还引用了FBI前法律顾问贝克（James A。 Baker）向国会提交有关调查的私人证词，“这不仅是阻碍调查的问题，而且阻碍本身也会损害我们弄清俄国人做了什么的能力，这对国家安全构成威胁。”
英国《卫报》指出，长期以来，特朗普与俄罗斯总统普京的友好关系被敲响警钟。
在解雇科米后的第二天，特朗普曾在椭圆形德办公室接待了俄罗斯外长谢尔盖·拉夫罗夫，并透露了以色列反恐行动的情报。
报道还称，《华盛顿邮报》周六报道特朗普从自己的口译员那里获得了2017年与普京在德国汉堡会面的笔记。该报援引现任和前任美国官员的话说，特朗普指示口译员不要讨论其与他国政要见面的事。
当被问到为何没有发布相关谈话时，特朗普回答称：“我会的，我不在乎。。。。。。我没有什么秘密，我不在乎。”
值得注意的是，去年12月，特朗普突然宣布药从叙利亚撤军。此举被视为俄罗斯取得的战略胜利，并促使国防部长马蒂斯辞职，这震惊了美国国家安全官员。特朗普还曾称赞苏联曾在20世纪80年代对阿富汗进行占领。
《卫报》进一步指出，美国众议院情报委员会主席亚当席夫在一份声明中没有对《纽约时报》报道的细节进行评论，但他表示“对于特朗普在竞选中反间谍问题，包括总统本人，从一开始就是我们调查的核心”。他说，情报委员会是对美国人民负有责任的，需要确保总统的工作符合国家利益，此行为没有受到其他任何因素影响。
共和党媒体：指控是要报仇
观察者网注意到，在站队民主党的《纽约时报》报道特朗普回怼FBI调查的同时，共和党媒体福克斯新闻也刊发相关报道。
报道援引特朗普私人律师约翰·多德（John Dowd）的话称，当（作为其老板的）特朗普和其他幕僚团队遭受离奇指控之时，作为特别检查官的穆勒没有提出过任何请求。
“《纽约时报》的报道披露并证实了科米和他的同事们为了破坏特朗普的自由选举，这种卑鄙、非法的官方行为破坏了整个联邦的司法系统，破坏了我们人民的自由。”
福克斯新闻还援引众议院情报委员会成员德文·努涅斯（Devin Nunes）的话说，《纽约时报》的报道恰恰说明联邦调查局领导人实际上并没有找到反对特朗普团队的证据。“相反，他们只是试图破坏他们不喜欢的总统，并为科米被解雇报仇。”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/12/trump-tweets-fbi-russia-new-york-times-james-comey
Trump vents fury over Russia stories and again threatens national emergency
- Report: FBI looked at whether president worked for Russia
- Trump remains at White House as shutdown grinds on
David Smith Washington bureau chief
@smithinamerica
Sun 13 Jan 2019 03.03 GMT First published on Sat 12 Jan 2019 19.07 GMT
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Donald Trump listens during a meeting on border security in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump has strongly denied the stunning claim that he was secretly working on behalf of Russia and again threatened to declare a national emergency to fund a border wall.
In 20-minute live phone interview with Fox News on Saturday night, he described as an “insult” the New York Times story that alleged the FBI launched an investigation into whether the he was acting as a Russian asset, against his own country’s interests.
Trump said the story, which claimed the investigation opened after Trump fired the FBI director James Comey in May 2017, was “the most insulting article ever written”.
“If you read the article you’ll see that they found absolutely nothing,” he said during the Fox News interview.
“I think [the story] was a great insult and the New York Times is a disaster of a paper. It’s a very horrible thing they said.”
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Donald Trump interview with Fox News.
Citing anonymous sources, the Times said the investigation was part counterintelligence, to determine whether Trump was knowingly or unknowingly working for Moscow and posed a threat to national security. It was also part criminal, to ascertain whether Trump’s dismissal of Comey constituted obstruction of justice.
The FBI effort was soon absorbed into the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, the Times reported, adding that it was unclear if the counterintelligence aspect is still being pursued.
The president again called Comey a “liar” and claimed the entire Russia investigation was a “terrible hoax”.
FBI reportedly opened inquiry into whether Trump was working for Russia
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“Everybody knows it. It’s really a shame because it takes time; it takes effort. Everybody knows there’s no collusion,” he said.
Trump repeated baseless claims that the FBI mishandled an investigation into his election rival, Hillary Clinton. The president insisted that he had been far tougher on Russia than any other president, repeating claims he tweeted earlier on Saturday.
“I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton,” he tweeted. “Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!”
Trump’s warm relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has long set alarm bells ringing. The day after firing Comey, he hosted Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in the Oval Office – and disclosed intelligence from an Israeli counterterrorism operation. At a summit in Helsinki last summer, Trump appeared to side with Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the question of election interference.
On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump took the notes from of a 2017 meeting with Putin in Hamburg from his own interpreter. Citing current and former US officials, the paper also said Trump instructed the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials.
Asked why he would not release the conversations, Trump said: “I would. I don’t care ... I’m not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn’t care less.”
In December the president startled his own national security officials by suddenly announcing the withdrawal of troops from Syria, widely seen as handing a strategic victory to Russia and prompting the defense secretary James Mattis to quit. He also bizarrely endorsed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, said in a statement he did not “comment on the specifics of the New York Times report” but said “counterintelligence concerns about those associated with the Trump campaign, including the president himself, have been at the heart of our investigation since the beginning”.
His committee, he said, “has a responsibility to the American people to ensure that the president is working in our national interest and is not motivated by any other factor”.
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Donald Trump with vice-president Mike Pence on Capitol Hill earlier this week. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Holed up at the White House, Trump turned to the other subject dominating US politics: the partial government shutdown which, going into its 23rd day, is now the longest in history, eclipsing the record set under Bill Clinton.
He called on the Democrats to do a deal and again threatened to declare a national emergency if they don’t “come to their senses”.
“I have the absolute right to call a national emergency,” he said. “Other presidents have called national emergencies for lesser importance than this. I’d rather see the Democrats come back from their vacation and act. It would take me 15 minutes to get a deal done and everyone could go back to work.”
America shuts down: how the federal government closure is impacting millions
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Trump is demanding $5.7bn towards his long-promised wall on the US-Mexico border, claiming it will solve a humanitarian and national security crisis. Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, have passed measures to reopen the government without funding the wall, which they regard as an expensive, impractical and immoral response to a manufactured crisis. The result is a political stalemate that leaves a quarter of the government unfunded.
About 800,000 workers missed pay cheques on Friday. The House and Senate voted to give federal workers back pay whenever the federal government reopens, then left Washington for the weekend.
With polls showing Trump getting most of the blame, the president is toying with the idea of declaring a national emergency, bypassing Congress and funding the wall from existing federal revenue. Republicans are divided on the move and it would be certain to face legal challenges.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html
F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia
Following President Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, the bureau grew increasingly concerned about whether the president’s actions constituted anti-American activity.CreditSarah Silbiger/The New York Times
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Following President Trump’s firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, the bureau grew increasingly concerned about whether the president’s actions constituted anti-American activity.CreditCreditSarah Silbiger/The New York Times
By Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos
- Jan. 11, 2019
The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.
The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.
Agents and senior F.B.I. officials had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. But the president’s activities before and after Mr. Comey’s firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.
[Trump responds to the Times's report on the FBI investigation via Twitter.]
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took over the inquiry into Mr. Trump when he was appointed, days after F.B.I. officials opened it. That inquiry is part of Mr. Mueller’s broader examination of how Russian operatives interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with them. It is unclear whether Mr. Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence matter, and some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening it.
The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation, that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence division handles national security matters.
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If the president had fired Mr. Comey to stop the Russia investigation, the action would have been a national security issue because it naturally would have hurt the bureau’s effort to learn how Moscow interfered in the 2016 election and whether any Americans were involved, according to James A. Baker, who served as F.B.I. general counsel until late 2017. He privately testified in October before House investigators who were examining the F.B.I.’s handling of the full Russia inquiry.
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The F.B.I. investigated whether the firing of Mr. Comey was a national security threat.CreditErik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock
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The F.B.I. investigated whether the firing of Mr. Comey was a national security threat.CreditErik S Lesser/EPA, via Shutterstock
“Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security,” Mr. Baker said in his testimony, portions of which were read to The New York Times. Mr. Baker did not explicitly acknowledge the existence of the investigation of Mr. Trump to congressional investigators.
No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials. An F.B.I. spokeswoman and a spokesman for the special counsel’s office both declined to comment.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer for the president, sought to play down the significance of the investigation. “The fact that it goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing,” Mr. Giuliani said on Friday, though he acknowledged that he had no insight into the inquiry.
The cloud of the Russia investigation has hung over Mr. Trump since even before he took office, though he has long vigorously denied any illicit connection to Moscow. The obstruction inquiry, revealed by The Washington Post a few weeks after Mr. Mueller was appointed, represented a direct threat that he was unable to simply brush off as an overzealous examination of a handful of advisers. But few details have been made public about the counterintelligence aspect of the investigation.
The decision to investigate Mr. Trump himself was an aggressive move by F.B.I. officials who were confronting the chaotic aftermath of the firing of Mr. Comey and enduring the president’s verbal assaults on the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt.”
A vigorous debate has taken shape among some former law enforcement officials outside the case over whether F.B.I. investigators overreacted in opening the counterintelligence inquiry during a tumultuous period at the Justice Department. Other former officials noted that those critics were not privy to all of the evidence and argued that sitting on it would have been an abdication of duty.
The F.B.I. conducts two types of inquiries, criminal and counterintelligence investigations. Unlike criminal investigations, which are typically aimed at solving a crime and can result in arrests and convictions, counterintelligence inquiries are generally fact-finding missions to understand what a foreign power is doing and to stop any anti-American activity, like thefts of United States government secrets or covert efforts to influence policy. In most cases, the investigations are carried out quietly, sometimes for years. Often, they result in no arrests.
Mr. Trump had caught the attention of F.B.I. counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump had refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail, praising President Vladimir V. Putin. And investigators had watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.
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Other factors fueled the F.B.I.’s concerns, according to the people familiar with the inquiry. Christopher Steele, a former British spy who worked as an F.B.I. informant, had compiled memos in mid-2016 containing unsubstantiated claims that Russian officials tried to obtain influence over Mr. Trump by preparing to blackmail and bribe him.
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In the months before the 2016 election, the F.B.I. was also already investigating four of Mr. Trump’s associates over their ties to Russia. The constellation of events disquieted F.B.I. officials who were simultaneously watching as Russia’s campaign unfolded to undermine the presidential election by exploiting existing divisions among Americans.
“In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself, you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability, America’s ability and the West’s ability to spread our democratic ideals,” Lisa Page, a former bureau lawyer, told House investigators in private testimony reviewed by The Times.
“That’s the goal, to make us less of a moral authority to spread democratic values,” she added. Parts of her testimony were first reported by The Epoch Times.
And when a newly inaugurated Mr. Trump sought a loyalty pledge from Mr. Comey and later asked that he end an investigation into the president’s national security adviser, the requests set off discussions among F.B.I. officials about opening an inquiry into whether Mr. Trump had tried to obstruct that case.
But law enforcement officials put off the decision to open the investigation until they had learned more, according to people familiar with their thinking. As for a counterintelligence inquiry, they concluded that they would need strong evidence to take the sensitive step of investigating the president, and they were also concerned that the existence of such an inquiry could be leaked to the news media, undermining the entire investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election.
After Mr. Comey was fired on May 9, 2017, two more of Mr. Trump’s actions prompted them to quickly abandon those reservations.
The first was a letter Mr. Trump wanted to send to Mr. Comey about his firing, but never did, in which he mentioned the Russia investigation. In the letter, Mr. Trump thanked Mr. Comey for previously telling him he was not a subject of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation.
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Thirty-seven people have been charged in investigations related to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Aug. 21, 2018
Even after the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, wrote a more restrained draft of the letter and told Mr. Trump that he did not have to mention the Russia investigation — Mr. Comey’s poor handling of the Clinton email investigation would suffice as a fireable offense, he explained — Mr. Trump directed Mr. Rosenstein to mention the Russia investigation anyway.
He disregarded the president’s order, irritating Mr. Trump. The president ultimately added a reference to the Russia investigation to the note he had delivered, thanking Mr. Comey for telling him three times that he was not under investigation.
The second event that troubled investigators was an NBC News interview two days after Mr. Comey’s firing in which Mr. Trump appeared to say he had dismissed Mr. Comey because of the Russia inquiry.
“I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it,” he said. “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”
Mr. Trump’s aides have said that a fuller examination of his comments demonstrates that he did not fire Mr. Comey to end the Russia inquiry. “I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people,” Mr. Trump added. “He’s the wrong man for that position.”
As F.B.I. officials debated whether to open the investigation, some of them pushed to move quickly before Mr. Trump appointed a director who might slow down or even end their investigation into Russia’s interference. Many involved in the case viewed Russia as the chief threat to American democratic values.
“With respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life,” Ms. Page told investigators for a joint House Judiciary and Oversight Committee investigation into Moscow’s election interference.
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F.B.I. officials viewed their decision to move quickly as validated when a comment the president made to visiting Russian officials in the Oval Office shortly after he fired Mr. Comey was revealed days later.
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to a document summarizing the meeting. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Follow Adam Goldman, Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos on Twitter: @adamgoldmanNYT, @nytmike and @npfandos.
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 12, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: F.B.I. Investigated if Trump Worked for the Russians. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
