2016 ELECTION/FBI/FOREIGN POLICY/HILLARY CLINTON/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “In a London bar three years ago, a young foreign policy adviser for Donald Trump’s campaign told an Australian diplomat something astonishing: Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Within months, the adviser, George Papadopoulos, was proven right as stolen emails damaging to Clinton surfaced online. Alarmed Australian officials tipped off their American counterparts. For the FBI, the information was worrisome. How did Papadopoulos get advance word of the emails? Was he or anyone else in the Trump campaign working with the Russians? Those questions led to the Russia investigation that would shadow Trump’s presidency for nearly two years. Trump and his supporters have seized on the FBI’s use of informants in Papadopoulos’ case and surveillance of another campaign aide to accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of unlawfully spying on his campaign. But both are common investigative techniques for agents trying to determine whether a foreign adversary is trying to compromise American national security.”
–Associated Press, “What’s Known About Surveillance of Trump Campaign Aides,” The New York Times online, May 3, 2019