The person two heartbeats away from the presidency has dumped cold water on the theory, pushed by the president, that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign.
On Wednesday, the first question House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) got in his weekly press conference was about President Trump’s repeated claim that the FBI inappropriately “spied” on his campaign in 2016. Ryan had just given a statement about economic growth, and as the first question started, turned to the side and said “I told you it wasn’t going to be an economic growth question.” CNN’s Manu Raju, the reporter, asked if Ryan agreed with Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who last week dismissed Trump’s accusations of the FBI spying on his campaign with a plant and said the FBI did “exactly” what it was supposed to do.
Ryan said, “Normally I don’t like to comment on classified briefings. Let me say it this way. I think Chairman Gowdy’s initial assessment is accurate.” Ryan then explained that the House members who were briefed on the matter, including himself and Gowdy, still had unanswered questions and were waiting on some documents. He argued that if they had been told this information earlier, “we could have wrapped this up faster.”
He concluded: “But I have seen no evidence to the contrary of the initial assessment that Chairman Gowdy has made — but I want to make sure that we run every lead down and make sure we get final answers to these questions.”
Gowdy made his comments on Fox News last week. “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,” Gowdy said when asked about Trump’s claims.
“So how do you like the fact they had people infiltrating our campaign?,” Trump asked at a recent rally in Nashville, Tennessee. “Can you imagine? Can you imagine?” He has said on Twitter that it could be “one of the biggest political scandals in history.”
SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was also in the briefing and said he learned “nothing particularly surprising,” and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to comment. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), long a loyal Trump supporter, is the sole attendee who has remained critical of the Department of Justice about their actions in 2016. Rep Chris Stewart (R-UT), who was not briefed on this, embarrassed himself when he was asked last week about Gowdy’s comments, saying “we don’t know” because “we haven’t actually seen the documents” even though Gowdy had.
The White House, when asked if Gowdy’s comments would cause Trump to retract his accusations that the FBI spied on his campaign, said in a press conference last week:
No. Clearly, there’s still cause for concern that needs to be looked at. Let’s not forget that the Deputy Director of the FBI was actually fired for misconduct. The President is concerned about the matter, and we’re going to continue to follow the issue.
Trump’s accusations are intended to change the landscape on which Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship to Russia operates. If Trump can convince enough Americans that the FBI was out to get him from the start — and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that Mueller is trying to frame Trump — then the impact of any serious findings of wrongdoing in Mueller’s report could be shrouded in counter-charges of bias.
Ryan was also asked about the idea of Trump pardoning himself, to which he said, “I don’t know the technical answer to that question but obviously the answer is he shouldn’t, and no one is above the law.”