Legal experts flagged a newly declassified memo that the White House called deep-state proof, even though it was about Trump's FBI.
During an interview on "All Rise News," legal journalists Adam Klasfeld and Allison Gill dissected the declassified FBI memo that the White House touted as proof of a "deep state" plot against President Donald Trump, even though it actually revealed that the FBI investigated him during his first term as a possible Russian asset.
"It's just one gunshot to the foot after another," Gill, who chronicled the probe by Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller, said. The memo was released by former reporter John Solomon and is dated the day before Mueller's May 2017 appointment.
Klasfeld pointed out that the "deep state" that the White House described in the memo was staffed entirely by Trump's own appointees. Despite that, the memo described how the FBI under Trump opened a full counterintelligence investigation into whether he was "wittingly or unwittingly" acting on behalf of the Russian government, Klasfeld said.
"I don't know how you're supposed to have a deep state in the agencies that you control," Gill agreed. "It's just so weird to me that Solomon, who I presume can read, is saying, 'Look at all this deep state stuff.'"
The memo was triggered by Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, an act that raised the possibility of criminal obstruction of justice, Gill pointed out. That possible obstruction wasn't hypothetical, Klasfeld noted, as Mueller's final report later documented it.
"It's hard to call it confirmation because there is confirmation that there was an investigation into Donald Trump for a possible obstruction of justice," he said. "And it's called the Mueller Report."
Mueller went on to catalog roughly 10 instances of potential obstruction before declining to reach a prosecutorial finding. On top of that, Gill said that FBI investigators did their job so cleanly that Solomon and the White House have nothing to take out of context.
"They can't even cherry-pick," she said. "There's nothing even to cherry-pick."