Is the Trump White House now attempting to use the Federal Bureau of Investigations as their own political prop? Why yes. Yes they are.
The FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential campaign, multiple US officials briefed on the matter tell CNN. [...]
The direct communications between the White House and the FBI were unusual because of decade-old restrictions on such contacts. Such a request from the White House is a violation of procedures that limit communications with the FBI on pending investigations.
There seems to be some disagreement on who called who first (that is, somebody here is lying) but the contacts were between White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Priebus wanted the FBI to rebut press stories about constant contact between the Trump campaign team and Russian officials. That request made it to director James Comey.
Comey rejected the request for the FBI to comment on the stories, according to sources, because the alleged communications between Trump associates and Russians known to US intelligence are the subject of an ongoing investigation.
Reince Priebus has publicly claimed that he "talked to the top levels of the intelligence community", and those FBI officials told him that the reports of the campaign-Russia connections were "grossly overstated and inaccurate and totally wrong." He would appear to mean McCabe, then?
It's more than a little odd that the FBI would supposedly be giving so much information about the state of their investigation to the very target of that investigation—though when Trump's team is involved, we can hardly claim it would be surprising. It would be more surprising to hear that they weren't trying to use the agency as just another political tool.
