"They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself," President Donald Trump tweeted. | AP Photo Trump tweets anger at FBI while White House scrambles to contain fallout The White House is pushing back against the media after a report revealed Priebus asked FBI to knock down a damaging story.

President Donald Trump chastised the FBI Friday morning for being “totally unable” to locate the source of media leaks, even as the White House scrambled to contain fallout from new reports of the White House asking the FBI to knock down damaging stories.

“The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers’ that have permeated our government for a long time,” Trump wrote on Twitter, breaking his message up into multiple posts. “They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW.”


The president’s remark comes on the same day that at least two cable news channels, CNN and MSNBC, devoted significant airtime to reports that the FBI had refused to publicly dispute news that individuals associated with Trump had been in touch with senior Russian intelligence officials during last year’s presidential campaign. CNN first reported Thursday evening that chief of staff Reince Priebus had asked the FBI to throw cold water on a New York Times story about campaign contacts with Russia, but that the FBI declined. The Associated Press reported a similar story Friday morning.

The White House pushed back intensely on the story, laying out a timeline of how it said the communication with the FBI went down, but its own account has shifted over the past 24 hours.

A senior administration official said on Friday that FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe told Priebus at an unrelated morning meeting on Feb. 15 that the Times story was “bullshit.” Priebus asked what could be done and McCabe reportedly demurred, only to contact Priebus later to say the FBI could not publicly denounce the story, the official said.

“We'd love to help but we can't get into the position of making statements on every story,” McCabe said, according to the administration official. McCabe did however tell Priebus he could cite “senior intelligence officials” saying there is nothing to the story, the official said on Friday.

FBI Director James Comey later contacted Priebus himself, the official said, to reiterate that the Times story was inaccurate but state that the FBI could not put out a statement, the senior administration official said. The official went on to say they are not aware of an FBI investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, but cannot say no definitively.

The senior official’s account Friday morning aligned closely with the CNN report — namely that Preibus and McCabe discussed the matter in person. The White House, however, initially told CNN the discussion had started with McCabe calling Priebus, but it has since corrected that account.

At a press gaggle held Friday afternoon for pool reporters and a limited number of other, invited outlets, Spicer continued his pushback, arguing that the White House’s decision to ask the FBI to publicly knock down reports about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia was a logical step, not a nefarious cover-up.

“They come to us with information that morning, say the story that was published is not accurate. What should have been the White House’s response?” Spicer told the gaggling press, which excluded some outlets including CNN, the Times and POLITICO. “They told us a story was not accurate. And our answer was, ‘what are you going to do to get the story right?’”

Excluding some rationale that might be in the interests of national security, Spicer said the bureau should be willing to come forward and publicly dispute incorrect reporting. The press secretary likened the situation to a reporter being given information that a story he or she had written was incorrect, a scenario in which Spicer said the reporter would immediately seek to update the story with correct facts.

“To come to somebody and say, ‘you've been accused of some pretty serious things, and we know them not to be accurate,’ I would assume you would want – I mean, isn't their job ‘justice?’”

Spicer also reiterated that he is not aware of any investigation at the FBI into ties between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, but if there is one, he said “they should do what they want. They should follow the law.” Spicer said a reporter’s follow-up question wondering if Trump should deliver the “follow the law” message to Attorney General Jeff Sessions was offensive.

Asked if the president plans to personally address the still-swirling allegations about his ties to Russia, Spicer said “there are no connections to find out about” and pointed to Trump’s regular denials that he has nothing to do with Russia and has had no interactions with the Kremlin.

“He’s answered it forcefully. There’s - You can’t disprove something that doesn’t exist. He’s talked about the fact how many times he’s talked to Putin. He has no interests in Russia. There’s only so many times he can deny something that doesn’t exist,” Spicer said. “I find a lot of this offensive, when you talk about us pushing back on something that doesn’t exist.”

Although Trump is just four weeks into his presidency, media reports based on anonymous government sources have already done damage to his administration. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign last week after excerpts of his phone call with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. were published by The Washington Post. Flynn had said he did not discuss easing sanctions recently imposed on Russia with its ambassador, but was forced to back away from that denial once the Post report showed that he had.

The latest flap has provoked the most intense rebuke from the White House so far, including a scolding from Spicer earlier in the day.

“What you guys have done is indefensible and inaccurate,” Spicer told reporters Friday morning. He said it would have been “insane” for Priebus to not try to get the FBI to publicly denounce the story after learning they considered it inaccurate.

Spicer also complained that the media is applying a double standard to the White House, saying reporters would complain if the White House put out an inaccurate story but would not apply the same logic to their own stories.

“What sane person would not want to set the record straight?” Spicer said.

