Hong Wu wrote:Trump: If FBI spy was there after Russians and not us, why didn't they tell us what Russia was trying to do?
I'm not sure what the answer to that is supposed to be but it's a pretty strong question, perhaps even stronger than the "why is there an investigation if they already had an informant" question.
From your own link: "It was also reported in late 2017 that the FBI did, in fact, warn the Trump campaign of possible Russian meddling."
In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.
The warning came in the form of a high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials, the officials said. A similar briefing was given to Hillary Clinton, they added. They said the briefings, which are commonly provided to presidential nominees, were designed to educate the candidates and their top aides about potential threats from foreign spies.
...
By the time of the warning in late July or August, at least seven Trump campaign officials had been in contact with Russians or people linked to Russia, according to public reports. There is no public evidence that the campaign reported any of that to the FBI.
After the FBI warning, the candidate's son, Donald Trump Jr., exchanged Twitter messages in September with Wikileaks, which the U.S. intelligence community publicly accused in October of acting as an agent in Russia's covert operation to interfere in the election.
...
That same month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a senator running the Trump campaign's foreign policy operation, met with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in his Senate office -- a meeting he failed to disclose during his confirmation hearing. (Sessions said he routinely met with foreign officials as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)
"If I give you a defensive briefing and the illicit behavior continues, I'm not going to just scratch my head over that, especially if I see continued interference," Montoya said. "If we're telling these guys stuff and they are not acting on it, then we're going to keep that as evidence."
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In May 2016, Trump Jr. met at a National Rifle Association dinner with a Russian central banker with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin who had previously contacted the campaign saying he wanted to pass on a message from the Russian president to Trump.
Also in May, Trump was told by campaign aide George Papadopoulos that he had connections with people who could facilitate a meeting between the candidate and Putin, according to a court filing. Papadopoulos had met with a London-based professor two weeks earlier who claimed to have connections to Russian officials, according to court documents.
In June 2016, Trump Jr. hosted a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin, and a Russian-American lobbyist. Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also sat in. An email to Trump Jr. setting up the meeting promised incriminating information about Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help the Trump campaign.
In July 2016, Manafort sent an email offering a private briefing on the Trump campaign to his former business partner, a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fb ... gn-n830596
It's laughable for the Trump campaign to whine "they didn't give us enough warning that they were onto us". These people are meant to be adults, with an understanding of the law, and a vague idea of the office they want to get elected to. Now they're falling back on "hey, we're so dumb, we didn't realise that all these foreigners trying to help get us elected might have been doing it for their own reasons that are not in the best interests of the USA, and that there are laws against outside interference in elections". it looks like there are a few people in the world gullible enough to fall for it, though.
I cannot understand why anyone thinks "why is there an investigation if they already had an informant" is a "strong" question. It's a dumb question. If someone tells you there could be illegal activity going on, you don't say "well, we've got an informant, so there will never be any need to look at the information he is giving us".