Trump Doubles Down on Crumbling Narrative That His White House Was Spied On, Demands an Apology from Lesley Stahl
Former President Donald Trump is not giving up on pushing the allegation that Hillary Clinton spied on him, despite nothing in the Durham investigation supporting that claim and extensive reporting debunking it.
Trump released a statement on Friday saying:
When is Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes going to apologize for saying that my campaign was not spied upon? On top of that, they spied on the White House!
Trump, who has made repeated statements claiming Clinton spied on him, is referring to right-wing media coverage of the latest court filing in the Durham investigation, which many have claimed says Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign “spied” or “infiltrated” Trump servers.
The Durham investigation has so far not alleged any spying. Durham’s findings and court filings claim that a Clinton-linked lawyer obtained non-public data from the White House and Trump’s servers – albeit not in an illegal manner.
The lawyer in question, Michael Sussmann, was charged last year by Durham with lying to the FBI. As Insider explains, the charges stem from Sussman “trying to get the FBI to investigate an allegation that the Trump campaign used a secret email server to communicate with Russia’s Alfa Bank during the 2016 campaign. The FBI has not uncovered any evidence of such a connection.”
Trump is directing his ire at CBS’ Stahl to settle an old score. During an October 2020 interview with Trump, Stahl famously shut the then-president down when he tried to make that unfounded accusation on air.
“They spied on my campaign,” Trump said to start the exchange.
“There is no real evidence of that,” Stahl replied.
“Of course there is, it’s all over the place,” Trump insisted.
“No.”
“Lesley, they spied on my campaign and they got caught,” Trump continued, before Stahl jumped in, “Can I say something? You know, this is 60 Minutes, and we can’t put on things we can’t verify.”
“You won’t put it on because it’s bad for Biden,” Trump replied.
“We can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Stahl responded.
The exchange went viral as part of the week-long media onslaught spinning accusations out of the Durham filing.
Trump’s former social media manager Dan Scorvino shared the clip on Twitter, without a caption. It quickly went viral in right-wing circles and led to a FoxNews.com article entitled, “Lesley Stahl’s infamous ’60 Minutes’ Trump interview resurfaces after Durham filing supports spying claim.”
— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) February 12, 2022
“‘Lesley Stahl should apologize to Donald Trump,’ Eric Trump tweeted” was the article’s subhead, referring to a tweet from the president’s son.
As Mediaite’s Colby Hall notes, the network appeared to give up on the narratives coming out of the Durham filing on Friday.
On Thursday, Hillary Clinton raised the specter of a libel lawsuit against Fox over the claims and Durham himself appeared to distance himself from the right-wing interpretations. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage noted that Durham “distanced himself on Thursday from false reports by right-wing news outlets that a motion he recently filed said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid to spy on Trump White House servers.”
