'The last president to vilify the FBI was Nixon': Trump's war with the FBI is set to backfire spectacularly

Associated Press/Alex Brandon

President Donald Trump pauses while speaking to the media before speaking with members of the armed forces via video conference at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, on Thanksgiving, Thursday, Nov. 23, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla.

• President Donald Trump has escalated a burgeoning war with the FBI in the wake of former national security adviser Michael Flynn reaching a plea agreement with the special counsel.
• Trump has slammed the FBI, saying they "ruined" Flynn's life.
• His battle could backfire, as it did in a tweet this weekend.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to federal agents about his conversations with the former Russian ambassador. President Donald Trump's initial reaction over the weekend: attacking the FBI as a "rigged" agency that had "ruined" Flynn's life while letting Hillary Clinton off the hook.

"So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday 'interrogation' with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times ... and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?" Trump tweeted on Saturday night.

He continued his attacks on Sunday, characterizing the bureau's investigation of Clinton's private email server as "tainted" because of text messages sent last year by one of the agents in charge of that probe that appeared to show an anti-Trump skew.

The president also laid into former FBI Director James Comey, whom he blamed for leaving the bureau's reputation "in tatters" after a "phony and dishonest Clinton investigation."

Speaking to reporters Monday morning, Trump said again that Flynn had been treated unfairly.

"I feel badly for General Flynn. ... Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her," Trump said. "She lied many times, nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they ruined his life. It's very unfair."

Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who spent 20 years at the bureau and specialized in counterintelligence, acknowledged that "Comey did more damage than he realized or intended by how he handled things last year."

But he said he thinks Trump "is actively keeping a narrative alive to counter the news coming out of Mueller's investigation. And I think he'll continue to latch onto any and all available targets to support his counter-narrative."

'We have a couple of surprises left'

Trump's suggestion that the FBI has sought to protect Clinton was undermined last November by his own campaign surrogate and close confidante, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

A few days before the 2016 election, Giuliani indicated in an interview with Fox News that someone within or close to the FBI had leaked him information about the email investigation into Clinton because they were "outraged" by the way Comey had handled it. Giuliani also suggested he and the Trump campaign intended to weaponize that information before Election Day.

"We have a couple of surprises left," he said.

In a later interview, three days before Election Day, Giuliani claimed that there was "a revolution going on" inside the FBI that had reached "a boiling point" over Comey's decision to close the Clinton probe without recommending criminal charges.

The reason for the leaks to Giuliani - and to multiple media outlets in the days leading up to the election - was that "the FBI is Trumpland," one FBI agent told The Guardian last November. Some agents, the person added, had openly discussed voting for Trump.

Thomson Reuters

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani speaks to members of the news media after meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York

"The reason why they're leaking is they're pro-Trump," another unnamed agent told the publication. Clinton "is the Antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel."

Olson, for his part, argued that "the bureau is neither anti-Trump nor anti-Hillary."

"All political opinions are well represented in the ranks of FBI employees," he said. "And the debates over coffee and lunch are the same as anywhere else."

Former FBI counterintelligence special agent Asha Rangappa, who served under President George W. Bush, largely echoed that assessment.

"There are people across the political spectrum, but by and large I'd say it is a politically conservative organization," she said.

"It's worth noting that the FBI has objectively investigated admins of both parties. Iran-Contra, Whitewater/Lewinsky, Valerie Plame leak, etc. All of the Presidents in these investigations let them take their course," she added. "The last president to vilify the FBI was Nixon."

'Now Mueller knows what the truth is'

That Trump has defended Flynn while vilifying the FBI signals a dual purpose to his attacks, experts say: undermine the bureau, and alert Flynn that he could be rewarded with a pardon if he limits what he tells Mueller, who is probing whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and if Trump attempted to obstruct justice when he fired Comey.

But taking his feud with the FBI and defense of Flynn into the court of public opinion may backfire for the president. A tweet he sent on Saturday showed why: It seemed to indicate that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn raising more questions about whether he tried to obstruct justice.

The White House scrambled to clean up the mess Trump's tweet had created, claiming hours later that Trump's lawyer John Dowd had crafted the tweet inartfully.

Legal experts were incredulous.

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn departs after a plea hearing at U.S. District Court, in Washington, U.S., December 1, 2017.

"Most lawyers I know are so careful about what they write that they triple-check every letter they send out," said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. "We're supposed to believe Trump's lawyer wrote a false tweet about the Mueller investigation and sent it out through the President's account?"

A pardon, moreover, would be essentially useless at this point, said former Department of Justice spokesman Matt Miller - and Flynn is likely aware of that.

"It would've worked before he started cooperating because Mueller could then compel Flynn's testimony and he could just claim not to remember anything," Miller said on Monday. "But now Mueller knows what the truth is."

The truth, according to court documents filed by Mueller's office on Friday, is that Flynn spoke to Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak about US sanctions on Russia during the presidential transition period - but told federal agents that the subject never came up.

Trump's renewed attacks on the FBI and hints of sympathy for his former national security adviser won't change the fact that Flynn, with his son facing criminal exposure and the looming threat of more charges related to his undisclosed lobbying work for Turkey, is now Mueller's star witness - one who, according to his lawyer, "has a story to tell."