Trump says those who ‘spied’ on his campaign should be convicted of treason – Washington Examiner

President Trump said court-ordered FBI surveillance of his 2016 presidential campaign was treason and those connected to it should serve long prison sentences.

“A really bad situation,” Trump tweeted Friday. “TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!”

FBI Director Chris Wray said earlier this month he did not consider the surveillance to be “spying” and he had no evidence the bureau illegally surveilled Trump’s campaign during its investigation into potential collusion between the campaign and Russia.

His comments to the Senate Appropriations subcommittee were a split from Attorney General William Barr, who has described the surveillance as “spying.” Barr did not say whether the FBI’s monitoring of the campaign was improper, but Trump has seized on those comments to bolster his claims.

In 2016, the FBI obtained a surveillance warrant to monitor the contacts of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

The attorney general is investigating whether the FBI abused its power to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation did not conclude there was a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians during the campaign.

The New York Times reported earlier this month the FBI sent an undercover female government investigator to meet with former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopolous, who was told by a Maltese professor during the campaign that Russia had dirt Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos wrote in his book, Deep State Target, that the woman, who said she was a research assistant, asked him whether the Trump campaign was working with Russia.