CORRUPTION
Giuliani Admits Goal of Classified ‘Spygate’ Meeting Was to Inform Trump Legal Team

President’s Personal Attorney Says ‘We Want to See How the Briefing Went to Today and How Much We Learned From It’ – They Shouldn’t Have Learned Anything
House and Senate Democrats and Republicans, legal and judicial experts, and many Americans are wondering why President Donald Trump’s lawyer was allowed to attend a highly classified bipartisan briefing on Capitol Hill, conducted by the DOJ, revealing information related to an FBI informant who spoke with several Trump campaign officials in 2016.
Emmet Flood, Trump’s White House attorney, along with Trump Chief of StaffJohn Kelly, attended the unusual meeting Thursday afternoon. Unusual because the subject of an investigation forced the investigators to reveal classified government secrets to his representatives, simply because he is the president.
Both Flood and Kelly reportedly left shortly after the meetings began.
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) made clear his objections to Flood’s presence. NBC’s Alex Moe:
NEW: Rep Adam Schiff: “Emmet Flood’s presence and statement at the outset of both meetings today was completely inappropriate”
— Alex Moe (@AlexNBCNews) May 24, 2018
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, admitted Thursday the White House strong-armed the DOJ into holding the classified intel meetings for one purpose only: to give Trump information about the Russia investigation.
“We want to see how the briefing went to today and how much we learned from it,” Giuliani told Politico. “If we learned a good deal from it, it will shorten that whole process considerably.”
RUDY tells @dsamuelsohn that today’s briefing will inform Trump’s legal defense:
“We want to see how the briefing went to today and how much we learned from it. If we learned a good deal from it, it will shorten that whole process considerably.”
Exactly what Dems feared.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 24, 2018
The question is, who at the meeting would be telling Trump’s personal lawyers anything? They should not have access to that, and if they do, someone at the meeting leaked it to them. That could have legal consequences.
Flood and Kelly’s “inclusion — and Giuliani’s remarks — are likely to further enrage Democrats, who have bashed the briefings from the start as a partisan sham meant to undercut Mueller’s scrutiny of the president,” Politico adds.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who attended one of the meetings as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said he had “never seen a Gang of Eight meeting that included any presence from the White House,” a reference to the bipartisan group of senior lawmakers that normally receives intelligence information.
PBS’s Lisa Desjardins says Sen. Lindsey Graham was surprised:
GRAHAM to me: “why he (the president’s lawyer – Emmet Flood) is there (in these classified briefings), I don’t know. That is a bit odd. If the president’s lawyer is there, I’d like to know why.”
— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) May 24, 2018
Senate Intel Committee Vice Chair:
For the record, the President’s Chief of Staff and his attorney in an ongoing criminal investigation into the President’s campaign have no business showing up to a classified intelligence briefing.
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) May 24, 2018
Here’s a good explainer on what “Spygate” is – and is not.
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