On Thursday night, President Trump said while doing an interview with Fox News’ Hannity that Attorney General Bill Barr is handling some pretty “big” and “incredible” new revelations. Apparently, it was Ukrainian actors that were responsible for leaking damaging information about Paul Manafort in order to help Clinton’s campaign. Last month, Yurii Lutsenko, the Ukraine Prosecutor General, opened an investigation into the apparent “black ledger” files that caused Manafort to leave Trump’s campaign. The investigation began once an underground audio recording showed that a Ukrainian senior anticorruption official actually admitted to leaking Manafort’s financial information, including his ties to pro-Russian actors in Ukraine, in order to help Clinton.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian law enforcement officials said that have plenty of evidence to support that the Democrats committed collusion and other wrongdoings. They have also said that they have been trying to share this information with the U.S. Justice Department for quite some time. According to a Ukrainian court, the Manafort leak was equivalent to illegal interference in the U.S. presidential election.
When President Trump was asked by Fox News’ host Sean Hannity whether or not Americans needed to see the results of Ukraine’s investigation, he replied with: “I think we do.” He continued by saying: “I would imagine [Barr] would want to see this. … I would certainly defer to the attorney general, and we’ll see what he says about it. He calls ’em straight.”
President Trump continued with: “It sounds like big stuff, very interesting with Ukraine. I just spoke with the new president a while ago, and congratulated him. … But that sounds like big, big stuff, and I’m not surprised.” It’s clear that Trump is following the words of his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, very closely. On Wednesday, Giuliani wrote in a tweet: “Keep your eye on Ukraine.”
In 2017, Politico performed an investigation that found that Ukrainian officials publicly attempted to undermine Trump by questioning his ability to be president. They also worked behind the scenes to make sure that Clinton won the election. Politico also found, among other things, that the Ukrainian government worked with a consultant for the DNC to find dirt on Trump, which included going after Paul Manafort for his ties to Russia.
President Trump also spoke about former FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok after finding out about new text messages that were revealed between the two. The messages pointed out that after the 2016 election they talked about using briefings to Trump’s team to help identify those that they could “develop for potential relationships,” track lines of questioning and “assess” changes in “demeanor.”
While speaking to Sean Hannity, Trump said: “They were trying to infiltrate the administration. Really, it’s a coup. It’s spying. It’s hard to believe in this country we would have had that.” He continued by saying: “I think it’s far bigger than Watergate, I think it’s possibly the biggest scandal in political history in this country, maybe beyond political.” To sum things up, President Trump described the new development as “very disconcerting.” He also put emphasis on the fact that Page and Strzok used their government-issued cell phones to share several anti-Trump messages, and to hide their extramarital affair from their significant others.
Referring to Strzok and Page as “two beauties,” “lovers,” and “sick, sick, people,” Trump said that “They were going hog wild to find something about the administration, which obviously wasn’t there.” He continued by saying: “They’re trying to infiltrate the White House, long after the election. This is a disgrace. Hopefully the attorney general will do what’s right, and I believe he will. … It’s possibly the greatest scandal in the history of this country.”
Trump also addressed his lack of confidence in Special Counsel Robert Mueller, saying that he was “best friends” with the former director of the FBI, James Comey. Trump also pointed fingers at Mueller for ruining the careers of many of the people on his team. Trump stated that he had “turned down” Mueller as director of the FBI, saying that he was “conflicted” not just “because of the fact that Comey and him are best friends,” but also because Trump “had a nasty business transaction” with Mueller. Apparently, this “nasty business transaction” had to do with Mueller’s failed attempt at getting a refund when he withdrew his membership from one of Trump’s golf clubs.
According to Trump, it’s a “very good” sign that the New York Times pointed out in a recent article that there were problems with credibility when it came to the dossier that the FBI used to justify putting surveillance on one of Trump’s campaign aides. The New York Times wrote that the dossier “financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee” was “likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries.” The article pointed at British ex-spy Christopher Steele for relying on Russian sources, which could be seen as a part of a “Russian disinformation” attempt to smear Trump. President Trump has made a promise to declassify and release the documents related to the surveillance warrants and many others. “Everything’s going to be declassified, and more,” Trump said. “It’ll all be declassified.”
