FBI Inquiry Into Trump’s Russia Ties Was Derailed

“For the last year, the Trump administration’s efforts to seek retribution against intelligence officials and FBI agents who investigated Russia’s 2016 election meddling have been spearheaded by federal prosecutors in South Florida trying to build a criminal case,” the New York Times reports.

“But in recent weeks, the White House has added a dimension to its push to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation, releasing a trove of previously classified FBI memos that it says back up President Trump’s claims that a so-called deep state was out to get him.”

“There is little new of substance in the documents… But the material does shed new light on an often overlooked aspect of the swirl of events surrounding Mr. Trump in his first months in office in 2017: the bureau’s remarkable decision to open a separate counterintelligence investigation into the president of the United States, and how that inquiry was sidetracked before it had much of a chance to get going.”