TPM EDITOR'S BLOG. Trump Was Warned and What To Think About That
By JOSH MARSHALL Published DECEMBER 18, 2017 4:47 PM
Let me share a few thoughts about this news that during the campaign candidate Trump was warned to be on the lookout for foreign governments, including Russia, trying to infiltrate his campaign. If he saw anything suspicious, he was warned he should bring it to the FBI.
We can note a few caveats to this news. Hillary Clinton was apparently given the same briefing. And this is apparently a standard friendly heads up the FBI’s counter-intelligence officers give new candidates as they begin to receive classified intelligence briefings after the national conventions. So we cannot, on the basis of this report, say that the FBI was already so worried about Russian infiltration of Trump’s campaign that it thought it was necessary to give him a warning. But there are a couple things I think we can say.
The first is the most obvious. According to this report and all other reporting on the Russia probe, no one from the Trump campaign ever reported any suspicious contacts to the FBI. Not the campaign itself. Not the candidate. Not any staffer for the campaign acting in some quasi-whistleblower capacity. No one. The point of these warnings isn’t to tell nominees they shouldn’t ally themselves with a foreign power. Presumably, they aren’t planning on doing that. But in the nature of the American presidential system, a nominee will often be someone with little or even no real experience dealing with classified information or knowing what attempted intelligence operations might look like. So it is a general heads up to be cautious.
As we have learned more and more over these last months about the Trump team’s numerous contacts with Russian nationals and government or intelligence officials, the key defense has always been that president-ing wasn’t their background. So if it looks fishy it was really just that they were naive or inexperienced.
Here’s where this additional fact becomes interesting. Let’s say it was just that: all these things were happening but Trump and his inner circle didn’t realize it was a problem. Okay, so far so good. Having received this warning, though, you would imagine someone might have said: “Wow, I sure hope these counter-intelligence guys don’t think our Russian friends who totally aren’t spies are spies. Maybe I should ring up that CI guy from the Bureau who told us to keep an eye out.” Or perhaps, “Man, we’ve sure got a lot of Russian friends we’ve met during the campaign. And that’s because we’re awesome. But I guess these FBI guys are really suspicious. So maybe I’ll just mention it so there’s no misunderstanding.”
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