Every few weeks, Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress claim they’ve found something that will prove the Russia investigation was a sham—a “witch hunt,” in the president’s words—all along. Conservative media outlets build a steady drumbeat of hype, telling their audience that this is the proof they’ve been waiting for. Ultimately, in every instance, their claims fall far short.

That track record makes it impossible to take the latest round of allegations at face value. In recent days, House Republicans have been pressuring the Justice Department to disclose information about someone inside the Trump campaign who clandestinely shared information with the FBI during the 2016 election. Those efforts received a White House endorsement on Thursday when President Donald Trump tweeted about an “embedded informant” inside his campaign.

Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI “SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.” Andrew McCarthy says, “There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.” If so, this is bigger than Watergate! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2018

McCarthy, a National Review contributing editor and a former federal prosecutor, is one of the conservative legal world’s most prominent skeptics of the Russia investigation. In a May 12 column, “Did the FBI Have a Spy in the Trump Campaign?,” McCarthy pointed to congressional testimony last August by Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Simpson told lawmakers that Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy whom Fusion hired to dig up dirt on Trump, had told him that the FBI took Steele’s dossier seriously because the bureau “had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source.”



The New York Times confirmed the existence of an informant—not a spy, which is different—in an article on Wednesday about the origins of the Russia investigation: “The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters—a secret type of subpoena—officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with” Trump campaign aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. The article prompted conservatives, including Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, to return to the issue.

Trump's tweet about an "embedded informant" in the campaign came after Giuliani said this on Fox and Friends.



"I think we're going to have to look into whether we can challenge the legitimacy of the entire investigation." pic.twitter.com/vWzCOc5UwG — Shelby Holliday (@shelbyholliday) May 17, 2018

This, in turn, fueled further tweets from Trump on the subject on Friday: