Last week, the White House almost shockingly sided with the Department of Justice in blocking GOP Rep. Devin Nunes from learning the identity of a highly guarded intelligence source. Several paragraphs into its report on the unusual White House/DOJ solidarity, the Washington Post wrote:
But it is unclear whether Trump was alerted to a key fact — that information developed by the intelligence source had been provided to the Mueller investigation.
Guess what? This week, that fact managed to seep through Trump’s thick skull and now, as Mark Sumner pointed out, Trump has joined the fight to reveal that source—no matter what the cost to U.S. national security.
In fact, Trump has been losing his mind over this "informant," tweeting Thursday:
You said it, Dons: "Bigger than Watergate!" The McCarthy piece he's referring to there was a lengthy National Review article penned last week. But Trump's tweet came the morning after the word "informant" turned up in the New York Times’s deep-dive mea culpa for an article the outlet originally ran just weeks before the 2016 election effectively exonerating Trump of any Russia wrongdoing.
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 Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said. That has become a politically contentious point, with Mr. Trump’s allies questioning whether the F.B.I. was spying on the Trump campaign or trying to entrap campaign officials.
While it's not necessarily clear yet whether the NYT "informant" is the same source Devin Nunes is trying to out, it’s certainly plausible. Whatever the case, Trump is on the war path.
"Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president," he wrote in one Friday morning tweet. “Apparently the DOJ put a Spy in the Trump Campaign," he wrote in another.
Per usual, Donald Trump has no idea what's going on. There's never been any indication this source or informant was a "plant." In fact, the intelligence officials claim exactly the opposite.
For all we know, this person is an American and perhaps a patriot who witnessed something that proved useful to the investigation into Trump's campaign and refused to lie about it.