News reports have revealed the identity of a Cambridge University professor who fed information about the Trump campaign to the FBI but the national media have consistently declined to characterize the activity as spying, and are actively rejecting President Trump’s push to call it spying.
“A lot of people are saying they had spies in my campaign,” President Trump told reporters Tuesday at the White House. “If they had spies in my campaign that would be a disgrace to this country.” He added that it “would be one of the biggest insults anyone has ever seen” if it were confirmed that spies working under the Obama administration had infiltrated his campaign, which he described as “very illegal.”
The Washington Post’s report on those comments said Trump was making a reference to a “confidential source” who the FBI used to “aid its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.” But the story disputed Trump’s suggestion that the FBI may have secretly spied on his campaign, and said there’s “no evidence to suggest that the source was inserted into the Trump campaign…”
The story instead chose to describe the informant as someone who “did engage in a pattern of seeking out and meeting Trump campaign advisers.”
At issue are recent news reports that identified Stefan Halper, the professor and longtime FBI informant, who made contact with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis. Unbeknownst to the Trump team, Halper at some point began assisting U.S. intelligence in the investigation into Russia’s election meddling.
Halper’s role in the investigation is still unclear — a fact news outlets mostly acknowledge for now. White House chief of staff John Kelly, at Trump’s direction, is organizing a meeting for Thursday that will include the Justice Department and Republican congressional leaders so that they can privately examine the DOJ’s information on the matter.
But despite the lack of details on Halper’s cooperation with the government at the peak of an intense political campaign, the media continue to pushing back on any suggestion that he was a spy.
An extensive New York Times report last week on the “Secret Origins of the [FBI’s] Trump Investigation” included 43 paragraphs in that there was “at least one government informant” who “met several times” with Page and Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign advisers.
Following that report, Trump tweeted Friday that it had been confirmed that “there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president.”
In a direct response to that tweet, a separate Times news headline tried to argue that “spying” wasn’t the issue, with the headline, “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.” The story’s first paragraph again disputed Trump’s characterization of Halper as a spy.
It also said Trump had accused the FBI “without evidence” of spying on his campaign, adding that, “In fact, F.B.I. agents sent an informant to talk to two campaign advisers only after they received evidence that the pair had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign.”
The story did not offer any reason for distinguishing between the terms “investigate” and “spy.”
The Washington Examiner on Tuesday asked the reporters who authored the story, Adam Goldman, Mark Mazzetti, and Matthew Rosenberg, for clarification on the difference. They forwarded the request to a Times spokeswoman.
“We’re not going to comment,” she said.
[Also read: Trump: Spies in my campaign would be ‘bigger than Watergate’]
Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president. It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a “hot” Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2018
Others also noticed the Times’ distinction. The right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board on Sunday sarcastically referred to Halper as “the FBI informant who wasn’t spying.”
A CNN segment on Tuesday also framed Trump’s comments about potential spying by the FBI as without merit.
“The FBI every day uses confidential sources to try to fight crime,” anchor Alisyn Camerota said to CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “Every day. That’s their M.O. That’s what they do. How is it that the Trump administration has tried to make it sound as though this would be spying for political purposes? Is there any evidence of that?”
Toobin replied that there’s “absolutely no evidence of that,” but that there is “evidence that they — the FBI used a confidential informant in the investigation of the Trump campaign during 2016.”
