DEMS/FBI/INTELLIGENCE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump and his senior advisers moved quickly on Thursday [6-13-19] to downplay and muddle his explosive assertion that he might not report to the FBI offers of election help from a foreign entity. As Trump’s Democratic opponents eviscerated him and one of his leading Republican supporters called his comments a ‘mistake,’ the president tried to recast his remarks, drawing a misleading comparison between accepting dirt from a foreign agent and his recent conversations with Queen Elizabeth and other world leaders…Every president regularly communicates with other heads of state. Accepting negative information from a foreign agent about a campaign opponent is a different matter, however. It is a crime for a campaign to solicit or accept something of value from a foreign entity, which some lawyers say could apply to information. Amid the firestorm, Trump and his top aides also turned to a familiar tactic: blaming the media. They argued that the president’s comments were taken out of context, insisting the reporting about his ABC News interview lacked nuance…However, the president’s full statement shows he was equivocal about whether he’d alert the FBI if he was presented with damaging information about his political opponents.”
–Andrew Restuccia, “Trump rushes into damage control after saying he’d accept foreign help in 2020,” Politico, June 13, 2019 2:50 pm