Grassley asks FBI if Trump was warned of Russian efforts to infiltrate his campaign

Erin Kelly | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump campaign reportedly hands over documents to Robert Mueller For the very first time, staffers from the president’s election campaign are reportedly providing documents to Robert Mueller, special counsel in the Trump Russia investigation. Aaron Dickens reports.

WASHINGTON — Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley released a letter late Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking if agents ever warned Donald Trump about possible attempts by the Russian government to infiltrate his campaign last year.

Grassley, whose committee is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said federal agents warned Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., about Russian ties by his former campaign manager when McCain was running for president in 2008. But McCain's office issued a press release shortly before midnight disputing Grassley's assertion.

"If the FBI did provide a defensive briefing or similar warning to the (Trump) campaign, then that would raise important questions about how the Trump campaign responded,” Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"On the other hand, if the FBI did not alert the campaign, then that would raise serious questions about what factors contributed to its decision and why it appears to have been handled differently in a very similar circumstance involving a previous campaign," Grassley wrote, referring to McCain's campaign.

McCain clearly took offense at being thrust into Grassley's letter to Wray. Grassley asked Wray to respond to the letter by Oct. 4.

"Neither Senator McCain nor anyone on his staff recalls receiving such warnings from the intelligence community," said McCain's spokeswoman, Julie Tarallo. "Facts are stubborn things, and the fact is no member of Congress has done more to push back on Russian aggression, human rights abuses, and corruption than Senator John McCain. Any suggestion to the contrary is clearly intended to distract from the serious ongoing investigations into Russia’s interference in our election system."

Grassley wrote the letter Wednesday after reports by CNN that the FBI began investigating former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business dealings with the Russians in 2014. Those reports, cited by Grassley on Thursday, also allege that Manafort was the target of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act monitoring by the Obama administration last year when he was working as Trump's campaign manager.

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"Further, former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified that the FBI began investigating ties between Trump campaign associates and Russians by July of 2016 and that President Trump was not under investigation," Grassley's office said in a statement Thursday.

"If the FBI had sufficient information regarding counterintelligence concerns to authorize these investigative activities, then it is important to understand whether it took steps to provide a defensive briefing or otherwise warn the candidate before the election."

Grassley, in his letter to Wray, noted that the FBI apparently warned McCain's campaign about Manafort's possible ties to Russia during the 2008 presidential race because one of McCain's top campaign advisers, Rick Davis, was Manafort's business partner at the time.

"The concerns allegedly involved work performed by Mr. Manafort and his business partner at the time, Rick Davis, on behalf of Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," Grassley wrote.

Davis and Manafort also had reportedly arranged for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to meet McCain twice, Grassley said. Manafort offered to provide Deripaska, who has ties to the Kremlin, with briefings on last year's presidential election, according to reports by The Washington Post.

"According to John Weaver, a former top campaign advisor to Senator McCain: 'My sense is that Davis and Manafort, who were already doing pro-Putin work against American national interests, were using potential meetings with McCain — who didn't know this and neither did we until after the fact — as bait to secure more rubles from the oligarchs,'" Grassley wrote.

But Tarallo disputed that description of events.

"Senator McCain had two interactions with Mr. Deripaska in 2006, and both were social occasions and entirely incidental," she said.

Grassley said warnings from the FBI to political campaigns allow "innocent, unwitting organizations and individuals to take defensive action to protect themselves."

If Trump's campaign was warned, then the FBI needs to make that clear so that campaign officials can be questioned about how they responded, Grassley said.

While Grassley seemed to be challenging Wray about the FBI's actions, McCain defended the Intelligence Community, including special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who is conducting a criminal probe that includes looking into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

"Senator McCain has high confidence in Special Counsel Mueller and our intelligence agencies, and trusts they will follow all of the facts surrounding Russia’s brazen attack on our election wherever they lead," Tarallo said.

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