Greg Sargent: Trump’s lies about the Russia probe devolve into absurdity

Thursday morning, President Donald Trump floated a series of big lies about the Russia investigation. They aren’t normal or conventional lies. They are profoundly absurd exercises in up-is-downism — that is, enormous, preposterously audacious falsehoods that run directly contrary to facts that are widely known and ascertainable with great ease.

Which is the whole point.

First Trump quoted Rush Limbaugh saying that the FBI never told Trump that the Russians tried to infiltrate his campaign, which Trump called a “hoax.” This is something that Trump has repeatedly floated in various forms, to push the idea that the FBI was actually spying on his campaign, rather than contacting Trump officials out of concern that his campaign risked being compromised by a hostile foreign power. Then Trump claimed that “I never fired James Comey because of Russia!”

The second of these, of course, is contradicted by the fact that Trump went on national television and flatly acknowledged that when he fired his former FBI director, he was thinking that “this Russia thing” is a “made-up story.” But the first of these deserves more attention, because it’s central to the narrative that Trump and his allies have fixed upon to discredit the original investigation (which has become Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe) as an Obama administration spy-ops effort to derail his campaign.

Trump says the idea that the Russians tried to sabotage the election on his behalf at all is a “hoax,” and that his campaign was never briefed on the concern among intelligence officials about it. As he has put it, “why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or ‘Justice’ contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?”

Let’s run through what we actually know that contradicts this absurd narrative:

• NBC News has reported that just after he won the GOP nomination in the summer of 2016, he received a high-level briefing from the FBI telling him “that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign.” The source: “multiple government officials familiar with the matter.”

• Around September of 2016, top intelligence officials briefed multiple congressional leaders, including Republicans Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, about the Russian effort to sabotage the election. Former president Barack Obama wanted to put out a statement condemning Russia’s action, but wanted a united bipartisan front. But as The Post reports, McConnell refused, and “made clear” that he would “consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.” Top Republicans not only knew that Russia was trying to tip the election to Trump; they said it would be unfair to Trump to publicly acknowledge it!

• Former CIA director John Brennan has gone on the record about these briefings. He told “Frontline” that he confirmed to GOP leaders that the view that Russia was trying to swing the election to Trump reflected “an intelligence assessment.”

• In March of 2017, a Democrat reminds me, Paul Ryan confirmed that GOP leaders knew. He told CBS News that congressional leaders of both parties sent a letter to secretaries of state around the country before the election warning that their election data was vulnerable to Russian hacking. Ryan explicitly told CBS that “we all knew this before the election. We all knew, Russia was trying to meddle with our election.” It is hard to imagine that “all” did not include the primary target of this Russian effort.

• As an aside, note that the idea that Russia was trying to interfere in the election was widely understood throughout the entire political world as early as June of 2016. The Post reported at the time that the Democratic National Committee computer network had been breached by “Russian government hackers.”

To believe that top intelligence officials did not brief Trump on the Russian sabotage effort, you have to believe that they did provide a briefing to senior Republican members of Congress, but not to the very campaign that those officials thought at the time was vulnerable to getting compromised, and that NBC’s sources are lying in claiming that his campaign was indeed briefed. That does not seem terribly likely.

Even putting aside what Trump knew at the time, his claim that the Russian sabotage itself was a “hoax” is contradicted by the consensus view of the intelligence community, Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russian nationals, and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee (all of those have also concluded that Russia’s goal was to help Trump win).

As I’ve argued, the audacity of Trump’s lying is its key feature. The whole point of Trump’s lies is to establish the power to say what the truth is, even when — or especially when — widely known, easily verifiable facts dictate the contrary. The brazenness of Trump’s lying is central to his assertion of the power to say what reality is.

But beyond all this, Trump’s continued insistence that he was not briefed would seem to invite a new round of serious journalistic scrutiny of that whole set of episodes throughout the summer of 2016.

* TRUMP’S FURY AT SESSIONS CONTINUES: Trump tweeted again in anger about Jeff Sessions’ recusal this week — Sessions, after all, was supposed to protect Trump from the Russian probe. And the New York Times notes this tidbit:

“In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has gone so far as to tell people not to raise Mr. Sessions’s name with him in conversation. The two men rarely speak outside of cabinet meetings.”

Trump simply cannot appreciate that there are good institutional reasons for his attorney general not to function as his blind loyalist.

* ADVISERS URGE TRUMP NOT TO FIRE SESSIONS: The Associated Press reports on the behind the scenes effort to keep Trump from firing Sessions:

“In private meetings, public appearances on television and late-night phone calls, Trump’s advisers and allies have done all they can to persuade the president not to fire a Cabinet official he dismisses as disloyal. The effort is one of the few effective Republican attempts to install guardrails around a president who delights in defying advice and breaking the rules.”

The AP notes that “influential conservatives” have privately urged Trump to hold off. One wonders if certain conservative media figures know more than they’re publicly saying about this.

* BLAME GAME STARTS AMONG DEMS: The Post looks at the developing disaster in California, where the pileup of Dem candidates and the primary system (the top two advance to the general) could end up locking Dems out of three House races:

“All three districts are held by Republicans, and all three are widely seen as crucial to Democratic efforts to pick up the 23 seats they need nationwide to win the House majority. ... Candidates are scrambling to set themselves apart, Democratic groups are urging unity to gain control of the House — and many voters are wondering how to contend with the despair they would feel if Democrats were locked out in this liberal state.”

This may end up being one place where the anti-Trump energy — which is why so many Dems are running — ends up devouring itself.

Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog, a reported opinion blog with a liberal slant — what you might call “opinionated reporting” from the left.