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“This is not something to put behind us and move on,” said David Bossie, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager. He said the White House and the Trump re-election campaign need to make sure “we are beating the drum” on how what he sees as a D.C. echo chamber bungled its handling of the Mueller investigation.

“The members of Congress, who made these ridiculous claims, how can they be on television again? How can they be called by reporters again?” Bossie asked. “How can reporters who have perpetrated this fraud gleefully on a number of networks, and at major newspapers across the country, how can they be trusted again?”

A campaign adviser said there was a plan to target Schiff repeatedly, and that Republican National Committee and campaign officials had extensively reviewed television and other footage for some of Schiff’s and other Democrats’ most “egregious” comments.

Raj Shah, a former White House spokesman who is now advising the campaign, described the findings by Mueller as “a complete and total kill shot.”

“It speaks volumes to the credibility the president is going to have when making the case on the economy, on crushing ISIS, on any number of topics,” Shah said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “The way to do this is, ‘They weren’t telling you the truth about this thing, they aren’t telling you the truth about ISIS, they aren’t telling you the truth about the economy.’ ”

Another White House and campaign strategy, an official with knowledge of the discussions said, is to remind the public of the most incendiary statements from the president’s critics – even if they were made on weekend television with low viewership, or in other obscure places.