House

Top Intel Dem slams Trump claim about FBI informant

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee slammed President Trump’s claim that there was an FBI informant spying on his presidential campaign.

“The most I can tell you, Chuck, is that this claim by the president, the suggestion by [Rudy] Giuliani that there is a political spy embedded in the Trump campaign is nonsense,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

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Schiff was referring to Trump’s most recent claim that former President Obama used “an embedded informant” to spy on his campaign.

“Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI ‘SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.’ Andrew McCarthy says, ‘There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.’ If so, this is bigger than Watergate!” Trump wrote on Twitter last week, referring to National Review writer Andrew McCarthy.

Schiff slammed the allegation as “destructive” to American institutions, arguing that was the goal of the accusations. 

“And you hear it in the same terms that Trump often speaks, which is ‘people are saying,’ or ‘I’m hearing,’ or ‘we’re being told,’ ” Schiff said.

“That’s another way of saying this is patently untrue, but we would like to spread it anyway and it’s singularly destructive of our institutions, but then that’s the point.”