FBI Opened Probe Into Whether President Trump Is Working For Russia: NYT
Comey firing led FBI to open an investigation into whether Trump was doing Russia’s bidding.
In the days following the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, the FBI launched a formal investigation into whether President Trump was working for Russia, The New York Times reports.
According to the Times report, Comey’s firing caused so much alarm among top law enforcement officials at the FBI that they began investigating if Trump was a national security threat or secretly carrying out anti-American agendas on behalf of Russian officials.
As the New York Times report details, “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,” the Times goes on to note.
“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.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller eventually took over the FBI investigation.
Read the full New York Times report here.
