IT NEVER ENDS: Trump pushed Australian PM to help Barr discredit Mueller investigation

[Miles Archer]

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1

Breaking via NYT: Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent call to help Attorney General Barr gather information for a Justice Dept. inquiry that Trump hopes will discredit the Mueller investigation, according to two American officials.

Link to tweet

[lagomorph777]

1. Flailing in all directions.

And clearly he still knows Mueller did damage.

[dalton99a]

2. Trump was asking the Australian government to investigate itself

In making the request, Mr. Trump was in effect asking the Australian government to investigate itself. The F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election began after Australian officials told the bureau that the Russian government had made overtures to the Trump campaign about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Australian officials shared that information after its top official in Britain met in London in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told the Australian about the Russian dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Papadopoulos also said that he had heard that the Russians had “thousands” of Mrs. Clinton’s emails from Joseph Mifsud, an academic. Mr. Mifsud, who was last seen working as a visiting professor in Rome, has disappeared. Trump allies, like the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, have put forth an unsubstantiated claim that Western intelligence agencies planted Mr. Mifsud to trap Mr. Papadopoulos.

Mr. Barr flew to Italy last week and met with Italian government officials on Friday. The Justice Department spokeswoman would not say whether he discussed the election inquiry in those meetings, but former Justice Department officials said that Mr. Barr would need to ask foreign countries for cooperation in turning over documents pertaining to the 2016 election.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

3. K&R! Big News, complete with scandal.