President Trump tweeted yesterday, quote,

I hear by demand and will do so officially tomorrow that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for political purposes.

Only Trump could open with the words, I hear by demand, and still be so lazy as to add, but I'll do it tomorrow.

Wow. Wow. Wow. That further discussion, not an inch.

Well, it's just designed to be a joke, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it was a joke. All right. A joke of a joke.

So there was a guy informing back to the FBI hanging around the Trump campaign and you either see that is scary or you see Trump wanting to investigate that is scary.

It seems to be you're in one of those two camps. So we now have multiple investigations and some investigations of those investigations going on.

It is. I mean, while I'm investigating those. Well, I wish you well in that endeavor. Devlin Barrett is a reporter for Washington Post who focuses on national security and law enforcement and joins us now to discuss the multi layered inquiries and controversies. Hello, Devlin. How are you, sir? Hey, how are you?

We're fine and dandy, although, you know, what we try to do around here is try to figure out what's actually going on. Are you a spy? Are you reporting back to the FBI?

Everything we say. No, not at all as opposed to pitching a monochromatic partisan point of view. And I think an honest person has to admit there's at least a lot of danger where a justice department decides to investigate a political campaign of the opposite party.

Right. And that is, you know, the concern and frankly, the accusation that a lot of Republicans are raising. And what they're arguing about now is exactly how that investigation was done and whether it was done fairly or justly.

Obviously, the Republicans are making a lot of accusations and for the justice department, it's a tricky situation because this investigation isn't over and it's very unusual to sort of show many cards while you're still in the midst of an investigation.

But that's essentially what some members of Congress and the president want done because the Trump administration is demanding to see the evidence used to open the investigation and or plant to the extent from Cambridge. Is that right?

Yeah, it's essentially they want to see the files related to a person, a Cambridge professor who essentially tried to gather some early information for the FBI in the early days of this investigation back in the summer of 2016.

Do we have any idea how common that is because I've heard people say it's unprecedented. I've heard people say it happens all the time.

I really think when you ask the question of lawyers, lawyers will say, well, this happens all the time because it is true that in any investigation, one of the very first steps you take would be to find what's called a confidential human source.

You know, sometimes they're informants, sometimes they're just people who like to help the FBI. Essentially what they do, what they call a brush up meaning you go talk to them, you go sort of feel them out on a topic or two and see if there's a reason for the FBI to be alarmed.

That is very common in FBI investigations and in fact is allowed even before they formally open an investigation.

But here obviously the concern is well if you're doing that against someone in the political space, is that fair and the right thing to do.

So like much of what's being discussed in these multi-faceted investigations, there is a smallish legal question and a very, very large political question.

Well, right. And I think a lot of what you're seeing is a legal investigation that's going on that we don't know a ton about in some ways.

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