Trump’s Lawyer and Chief of Staff Appear at Briefings on F.B.I.’s Russia Informant
"mr40, 'It's a f---ing circus': Experts are floored that White House officials attended highly classified briefings about the Russia probe"
Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, on Thursday.CreditTom Brenner/The New York Times
By Nicholas Fandos and Katie Benner
May 24, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s chief of staff and a White House lawyer representing the president in the Russia investigation were present on Thursday at the start of two classified meetings requested by members of Congress to review sensitive material about the F.B.I.’s use of an informant in the inquiry.
The two men left both meetings after sharing introductory remarks “to relay the president’s desire for as much openness as possible under the law” and before officials began to brief the lawmakers, the White House said in a statement.
[...]
While there is no constitutional provision that says the president’s personal lawyer cannot make a statement at a classified briefing, legal scholars expressed misgivings.
“Even if Flood wasn’t there for any operative parts of the meeting, the optics are disquieting,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “Rather than being sensitive to the clear potential conflict this creates, the president is driving a truck through the middle of it. Historically, a president would be very careful to avoid the appearance of a conflict, as opposed to relishing in it.”
Mr. Ryan, who has been criticized for not reining in House Republican attacks on the Russia inquiry and federal law enforcement, defended the unusual meetings.
[...]
Mr. Trump continued to rail against law enforcement on Twitter on Thursday, repeating his unsubstantiated claims. “Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal,” he said, without citing evidence, before referring to the matter as “one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.”
Five former top American intelligence officials who have worked for Democratic and Republican administrations, including Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, warned on Wednesday that House Republicans were putting at risk the tradition of bipartisan oversight of intelligence.
“When congressional oversight is overly partisan — or focused on undermining important counterintelligence investigations — we worry about inappropriate political influence on the investigators and the erosion of a bipartisan approach to intelligence and national security,” they wrote in an open letter.
Reporting was contributed by Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman from New York, and Adam Goldman, Thomas Kaplan and Charlie Savage from Washington.
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