FBI officials warned Donald Trump that foreign countries like Russia would try to "infiltrate" his campaign as far back as August 2016, NBC News reported Monday. Then the Republican presidential candidate facing off against Hillary Clinton, Trump was apparently briefed on the possibility just weeks after he officially won the GOP nomination.
NBC News reports that counterintelligence officials asked both Clinton and Trump to tell the FBI about any unsavory outreach from foreign actors. Trump most likely received his briefing after Aug. 17, 2016, NBC News reports, by which point several Trump campaign officials had already had the type of interactions that the FBI would be curious about; Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting at Trump Tower with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, for example, occurred in June of that year, even though it was not publicly known until The New York Times reported on it this past July.
Former FBI counterintelligence agent Frank Montoya told NBC News that the intelligence community was "aware of contacts" between Trump campaign officials and Russia prior to Trump's briefing, and claimed officials downplayed that knowledge to Trump so as not "to compromise the investigation." Montoya additionally claimed that if Trump's team was indeed warned of potential foreign interference and then stood by as it appeared to occur, that could be a problem. "If we're telling these guys stuff and they are not acting on it, then we're going to keep that as evidence," Montoya said.
A White House spokesperson downplayed the report and said it was "hardly a news story," citing the fact that both Trump and Clinton were briefed on the matter. Clinton's team did not respond to an NBC News request for comment. Read the full story at NBC News.