The White House has arranged a briefing between intelligence officials and two top Republicans to look at classified documents about a confidential FBI informant who made contact with the Trump campaign. No Democrats were invited, and the White House is defending the decision to exclude them.
President Donald Trump, who has long complained the Russia investigation is a "witch hunt," is now weaponizing the agencies he's cast as enemies to argue he is the victim of misconduct at the highest level of law enforcement, NBC News reported.
Trump put pressure on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray to ask the Justice Department inspector general to expand its look at the investigation into the Trump campaign. They also agreed to sharing classified information with congressional Republicans and other national security officials.
Experts on the Constitution say the president's latest moves may be legal, but they are outside the normal behavior of a president after the Watergate scandal. And they said the attacks on federal institutions and players could amount to obstruction of justice.
"The problem is that things that are normally respected are disrespected in this administration, such as the distance the president should have from the Justice Department," said Richard Ben-Veniste, an an assistant special prosecutor in charge of the Watergate Task Force.
