Thanks to reporting by the Washington Post and the New York Times, we now know that on July 25th, the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid on Paul Manafort’s home in Virginia as part of the Russia investigation. This news is obviously interesting on its own due to its timing and that it seems to have been a no-knock raid.
However, there is something else going on here that deserves closer scrutiny. As others have noted, shortly after this raid was conducted, Donald Trump took to Twitter to attack both the acting FBI director at the time (Andrew McCabe) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
There are two things of interest here. The first, and most obvious, is that Trump’s tweets would seem to constitute another attempt by Trump to interfere in the broader investigation into his campaign’s involvement with Russia. Specifically, Trump’s use of the term “Drain the Swamp!” would seem to be a thinly veiled request that Sessions fire Andrew McCabe which would likely draw the attention of the Mueller investigation.
The second thing of interest is that this brings to light a very peculiar trend regarding Trump and his tweeting behavior. Thanks to the invaluable Trump Twitter archive (search term: FBI) and the Trump-Russia timeline by Public Radio International, we can see that there is a general trend whereby Trump attacks the FBI on Twitter when there are major developments in the Russia-Trump investigation. Moreover, Trump’s attacks on the FBI always seem to pre-date the publication of the accompanying news story (this isn’t strange as we should assume that Trump is briefed on these matters beforehand). Follow me below the fold to see where his tweets and the FBI overlap.
January 5th and 6th
On January 5th, Trump tweeted the following (for reasons that are unclear the tweet below has the wrong date, it was posted at 5:30pm on January 5th):
On January 6th, we learned that the NSA, CIA, and FBI had released a report affirming that Russia was acting to harm HRC during the 2016 election.
February 13th to 15th
On February 13th, Michael Flynn resigns as Trump’s National Security Advisor.
On the February 14th, Donald Trump asks James Comey to drop the FBI investigation into Michael Flynn. According to Comey, he does not agree to let the investigation go.
On February 15th, Trump tweets the following:
March 20th
Early in the morning on March 20th (6:02am), Trump tweets:
Later on that same morning, Trump again attacks the FBI:
Later on that day, James Comey tells the House Intelligence Committee that Trump’s campaign is under investigation for its possible collusion with Russia.
March 30th and April 3rd
Although we learned this later on during Comey’s testimony, March 30th is the day that Trump phones Comey to ask him to ‘lift the cloud’ surrounding the FBI investigation and his campaign.
Just three days later on April 3rd, Trump directs a tweet at the FBI:
May 2nd to May 9th
It seems likely that there were a number of things going on behind the scenes (i.e., discussions to fire Comey) as these are the most pointed tweets from Trump. On May 2nd (once again, this tweet was posted on the 2nd not the 3rd as noted below):
On May 7th:
The next day on May 8th, Sally Yates testifies to the Senate about her contact with the FBI and White House regarding Flynn.
On May 9th, James Comey is fired.
After May and into June/July, the pattern appears to have changed as Trump directed his ire on Twitter towards Robert Mueller’s investigation (use the search term Witch Hunt). However, there is something that we should be watching for as it relates to the investigation into Trump and his campaign. As we learned today, when Trump attacks the FBI on twitter, you can be sure that there is likely to be something happening behind the scenes regarding the investigation. Moreover, Trump ramped up his attacks on Mueller in late June to July and it would not be at all surprising to find out at a later date that there were serious developments behind the scene.