Trump Alleges FBI Implanted Informant In His Campaign In 2016

US President Donald Trump alleges FBI “implanted” its representative in his campaign during 2016 elections.

US President Donald Trump and former FBI Director James Comey.

(Photo: AP)

US President Donald Trump took on the FBI on Twitter on Friday alleging that the department had planted its representative in his camp during the presidential campaign in 2016.

Trump’s accusation comes at a time when Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating allegations of a possible collusion between Trump's election campaign team and Russia in 2016. The US President, however, has always denied these allegations and termed the investigation against him a witch hunt.

While US President Donald Trump has not been able to furnish evidence into his claims that an FBI mole infiltrated his campaign, his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, told CNN that, “I don't know for sure, nor does the president, if there really was one”.

For a long time, we’ve been told there was some kind of infiltration. At one time, the president thought it was a wiretap.

Rudolph Giuliani to CNN 

Reuters reported that Glenn Simpson, who heads a consulting firm in Washington and hired former British spy Christopher Steele to investigate Trump's dealings with Russia prior to the campaign, testified in August 2016 before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

While Simpson did say that some of what he collected was human source intelligence, he, however, did not suggest that a spy could have been sent to infiltrate Trump’s campaign.

The New York Times meanwhile reported that FBI sent an informant to interact with George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, who were Trump’s campaign advisers. The NYT further wrote that it has uncovered the identity of the informant, who is an American academic who teaches in Britain but refrained from naming the informant to “preserve their safety."

Reuters reported that while some Republicans are demanding classified documents related to the alleged informant, the Justice Department refused to provide it to them. Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, reportedly warned members of Congress against publicly outing FBI sources terming the move “irresponsible and at worst potentially illegal”.

(With inputs from CNN, Reuters, New York Times)

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