Trump admin hopes Pelosi will be too distracted by government shutdown to launch new Russia probes

White House officials are hoping that President Donald Trump has stumbled into a political situation that could distract the incoming Democratic majority from investigating him and his family, according to a new report.

Sources close to the White House say the government shutdown over Trump's border wall funding could set partisan voters against one another and bedevil incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the beginning of her new term, reported The Daily Beast.

“The more the focus is on the wall, the more Pelosi is forced to focus on this fight instead of the investigations,” said one source close to the White House. “It’s a situation where [Trump] has no choice but to shut it down. It’s the best of the worst choices. It’s really the only choice [because] I think there are people who would vote for him today who might not if he gave in too quickly."

Two Trump allies said the president believes the shutdown is a winning issue for him that will trap the Democrats into "screwing themselves," but one former aide said the president had essentially fallen backwards into a situation White House aides feel increasingly confident about.

“I don’t think [the White House] thought it out strategically,” the former aide told The Daily Beast. “It is something Trump fell into and got lucky. He’s a lucky guy in a lot of ways.”

But Democrats widely believe Trump's position in the border wall standoff is much weaker than Pelosi's, and they doubted the veteran lawmaker would be distracted from pushing sweeping ethics reforms and House oversight of the executive branch.

“I don’t see this as going well for them," said one top ranking congressional Democratic aide. "He keeps digging himself further in a hole with his every comment and move. The idea that they’re somehow doing good in this shows they’re clearly living in a Fox News bubble.”