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:
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.”
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:
Senate Intel Committee Vice Chair: