Did Bill Barr just get caught lying to Congress about Trump?
During his Senate hearing on Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr claimed that Donald Trump had not been warned about potential Russian influence operations targeting his 2016 campaign — but as some spectators pointed out, that claim appears not to be true.
Andrew Desiderio, a congressional reporter for Politico, noted on Twitter that although "Barr said one of his questions is why Trump wasn’t briefed that his campaign could be the target of foreign influence ops," NBC reported in 2017 that the president's campaign had been warned that Russia would try to "infiltrate" their ranks.
In the December 2017 report, NBC News noted that multiple government officials told them about the briefing by high-level counterintelligence agents who "briefed and warned" the campaign — and that, according to a source close to the White House, Trump was not aware at the time that his aides had been in contact with Russians.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance also noted the discrepancy between reports about the campaign's briefing and the AG's testimony.
"Leaving aside the fact FBI did brief on the threat of Russian interference, Barr should be troubled that the campaign never picked up the phone & told the FBI about any, let alone all, of the outreach it had from Russians," she wrote.
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