Under Fire, Trump Backtracks on Reporting Foreign ‘Dirt’ to FBI
Trump Reframes Comments on Accepting Foreign Dirt on Rivals
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he’d report to the FBI if a foreign official gave him damaging information on a campaign opponent, partially walking back a remark earlier this week about how he’d handle the situation after criticism from Democrats and government officials.
“Of course you give it to the FBI” if warranted, Trump said Friday in a phone interview with Fox News. But he said he’d review the information first and make an assessment.
“If you don’t hear what it is, you don’t know what it is,” he said.
The president also asserted that foreign officials are unlikely to offer him any such information on a rival.
“I don’t think anyone would present me with anything bad because they know how much I love this country,” he said.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller discovered that a Russian lawyer approached Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. in 2016, offering damaging information from the Kremlin about Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The younger Trump didn’t report the encounter to authorities when it happened and has said the lawyer didn’t provide any useful information during a Trump Tower meeting.
Trump told ABC News in an interview that aired Wednesday that he’d want to hear damaging information about an opponent even if it were provided by a foreigner. His comment came in response to a question about whether Trump Jr. should have accepted the Russian offer for “dirt” on Clinton.
“I think I’d take it,” the president said. Asked whether he would accept information from foreigners or hand it over to the FBI, Trump said he thought that “maybe you do both.”
“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” he said, adding that if someone from a country such as Norway offered information on his opponent, he would “want to hear it.”
The comments drew criticism from lawmakers and other government officials, as they went to the heart of some of the controversial conduct Mueller’s investigation revealed.
Federal Election Commission Chairman Ellen Weintraub tweeted on Thursday to be “100% clear” that “it is illegal to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.”
Weintraub, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote before the statement: “I would not have thought that I needed to say this.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net;Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kasia Klimasinska at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne, Justin Blum
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