Former RNC Chair on Trump FBI ‘spygate’ claim: ‘Republicans are complicit in this crazy’
Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Friday scolded Republicans on MSNBC over their muted response to President Trump’s claims that a “spy” was embedded in his campaign.
Steele told “Morning Joe” that party members “are complicit in this crazy.”
“And they’re sitting here now and dumbing down the system. They’re disintegrating the very pillars of justice in this country … by going after those institutions like the FBI and the [Department of Justice] DOJ, but then permitting the president to behave in a way in which no other American citizen — and they no damn well that this is true — would be able to behave,” he said.
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He also questioned why White House attorney Emmet Flood was permitted to join Thursday classified intelligence meetings where bipartisan congressional party leaders were briefed by senior law enforcement officials.
“What the president’s team did yesterday is something no other citizen in this country would be permitted to do,” said Steele, who served as RNC chairman from 2009 to 2011. “And that is to have their counsel and their executive chief officer from their business, if you will, inside a meeting.”
Flood, who served on President Clinton’s White House legal team during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to impeachment proceedings 20 years ago, stopped by the Thursday meetings at Trump’s behest, according to a member of his personal legal team, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“The president personally wanted Emmet there today,” Giuliani told ABC News.
The White House said Flood did not stay for the substance of the briefings and only made “brief remarks before the meetings started to relay the president’s desire for as much openness as possible under the law.”
The meetings were arranged by the White House in response to Trump’s outspoken criticism regarding a confidential FBI source who was in contact with several campaign advisers during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that the FBI “planted” a “spy.”
“This is another violation of constitutional norms,” co-host Joe Scarborough said of Trump’s spying claim.
“This is the president of the United States lying about what the FBI has been doing, lying about what the Republican FISA court judges have been doing, lying about what the Justice Department has been doing. Lying, lying, lying,” he added, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts.
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