Trump Urged Top Intelligence Officials to Publicly Deny the Existence of Evidence of Collusion

Now at Least Three Top Administration Officials Were Asked to Intervene for Trump

President Donald Trump repeatedly asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion between Trump, his campaign, and Russia, a bombshell Washington Post report Monday night reveals.

In March, “Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election,” the Post reports.

“Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the requests, which they both deemed to be inappropriate, according to two current and two former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications with the president,” stirring more people to say this is evidence of obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense.

“Current and former senior intelligence officials viewed Trump’s requests as an attempt by the president to tarnish the credibility of the agency leading the Russia investigation.”

President Trump’s goal, according to one senior intelligence official, “was to ‘muddy the waters’ about the scope of the FBI probe at a time when Democrats were ramping up their calls for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, a step announced last week.”

Senior intelligence officials also saw the March requests as a threat to the independence of U.S. spy agencies, which are supposed to remain insulated from partisan issues.

“The problem wasn’t so much asking them to issue statements, it was asking them to issue false statements about an ongoing investigation,” a former senior intelligence official said of the request to Coats.

In another stunning revelation, the Post reports that “senior White House officials sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials said the White House appeared uncertain about its power to influence the FBI. 

“Can we ask him to shut down the investigation? Are you able to assist in this matter?” one official said of the line of questioning from the White House. 

The new revelations add to a growing body of evidence that Trump sought to co-opt and then undermine Comey before he fired him May 9.

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