Trump Says He Won’t Call FBI If Foreigners Offer ‘Dirt’ On Opponent, But 84 Percent Of Voters Say He Must
Special counsel Robert Mueller, in his report of his investigative findings — which was posted online by The New York Times — details numerous contacts between Russians and the 2016 Donald Trump campaign, including, as The Inquisitr reported, at least two offers of “dirt” on Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
But no one in the Trump campaign ever informed the FBI of the potentially illegal Russian overtures, and in fact — as The Inquisitr reported — Mueller wrote that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally” from the Russian operation, and “welcomed” it.
On Wednesday, Trump told ABC News interviewer George Stephanopoulos that if he was offered “dirt” on a political opponent in his 2020 political campaign, “I think I’d take it.” Federal law makes soliciting or accepting campaign help from foreign entities a crime, as USA Today reported.
Trump also scoffed at Stephanopolous’s suggestion that he should call the FBI if a foreign entity were to offer such dirt. He said, as CNN‘s Josh Campbell reported via Twitter, that FBI Director Christopher Wray — a Trump appointee who has said that candidates must call the FBI if they are contacted from foreign governments — is “wrong.”
“Give me a break – life doesn’t work that way,” Trump told Stephanopolous, adding the assertion, without citing any evidence, that “when you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have.”
Video: Here's the clip that's now going to dominate news cycles in which Trump tells @ABC's George Stephanopoulos that if offered "information on opponents," he would "listen" to what they have to say then ONLY "maybe" go "to the FBI if I thought there was something wrong" pic.twitter.com/z7mkhJnduO
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 12, 2019
Wray is far from alone in believing that Trump, or any candidate, must inform the FBI in response to an offer of “dirt” from a foreign government. According to a recent poll by Law Works(via Twitter), an overwhelming 84 percent of American voters also believe that politicians should be required to inform the FBI of contact from foreign governments.
The Law Works poll found that not only do 84 percent of all voters support legislation that would require candidates to report such foreign contacts to the FBI, but 75 percent of Republicans also support the “Duty to Report” legislation.
Trump’s remarks drew an immediate response from Democratic leaders, including the current frontrunner in the party’s primary race to become Trump’s opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.
“Trump is once again welcoming foreign interference in our elections. This isn’t about politics. It is a threat to our national security,” Biden wrote in his official Twitter account.
In an interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff said that Trump’s remarks give a “green light” for foreign governments to interfere in the 2020 election, just as Russia did in 2016, according to remarks posted via Twitter.
“You put two and two together and the Russians know as long as they intervene on Trump’s behalf, he is too weak to ever call them out and he may even be grateful for it,” Schiff said.
