David Axelrod, who served as senior advisor to President Obama, said Congress would have "raised hell" if Obama's White House had asked the FBI to publicly rebut stories about an investigation into the president's allies — as President Trump's team reportedly did.

“If @BarackObama [chief of staff] had called the FBI to knock down a story on an ongoing probe of the president's allies, Congress would have raised hell,” Axelrod tweeted Friday.

If @BarackObama COS had called the FBI to knock down a story on an ongoing probe of the president's allies, Congress would have raised hell. — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 24, 2017

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CNN reported Thursday that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus asked FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to have the agency dispute media reports that some Trump associates had frequently communicated with Russian intelligence officials during the 2016 campaign.

Priebus himself has denied that significant contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russian officials took place. During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he shot down a New York Times story about the communications as “total baloney.”

A White House official told CNN that the request to deny the news stories was made after the FBI suggested that the reports were not accurate.