title:  Trump Told FBI To Kill Stories About His Connections To Putin, They Said No
text: Quite a bit about the Trump presidency has been unprecedented   the amount of hate crimes in the country, the number of white supremacists in the White House, the level of corruption Speaking of corruption, reports are now surfacing that indicate Trump is extremely worried about the numerous investigations into The Donald and his team s connections to Russia.A White House official revealed Thursday that chief of staff Reince Priebus contacted a top FBI official to dispute reports that members of the administration and Trump s campaign staff were in frequent contact with Russian operatives during the election. WDSU reports:The official said Priebus  request came after the FBI told the White House it believed a New York Times report last week describing those contacts was not accurate. As of Thursday, the FBI had not stated that position publicly and there was no indication it planned to.The New York Times reported that U.S. agencies had intercepted phone calls last year between Russian intelligence officials and members of Trump s 2016 campaign team.Priebus  discussion with FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe sparked outrage among some Democrats, who said he was violating policies intended to limit communications between the law enforcement agency and the White House on pending investigations. The White House is simply not permitted to pressure the FBI to make public statements about a pending investigation of the president and his advisers,  Michigan Representative John Conyers, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said of the news.A 2009 memo from then-AG Eric Holder makes it very clear that the Justice Department is only to advise the White House on ongoing investigations   when it is important for the performance of the president s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective. The FBI has not made a public statement regarding Trump and his team s Russia connections, but Priebus says that the top levels of the intelligence community  have informed him that the allegations are  not only grossly overstated, but also wrong. We didn t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth,  White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in response to reports   an admission that the Trump administration had violated the decade-old rule against such contacts.It is clear at this point that Trump and his friends are scared. Good.Featured image via Getty Images (Pool)