Republican speaker doubts Spygate. Plot to 'frame' Trump

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan agreed Wednesday that the FBI did nothing wrong by using a confidential informant to contact members of the Trump campaign as it investigated its ties to Russia, contradicting President Trump’s assertions of a broad conspiracy by federal law enforcement. And he warned that Trump should not try to pardon himself, despite Trump’s assertion two days earlier that the president has the power to take such a step.

“I don’t know the technical answer to that question, but I think obviously the answer is he shouldn’t,” Ryan told reporters. “And no one is above the law.”

Trump has seized on the disclosure of the use of an informant to claim, without evidence, that federal law enforcement officials had improperly placed a spy in his campaign. He demanded a Justice Department inquiry of the matter and dubbed the matter “SPYGATE” in repeated posts on Twitter.

Ryan became the highest-ranking Republican to throw cold water on that interpretation, which Democrats and former high-level law enforcement officials have claimed was an effort to discredit the ongoing investigation into Trump and his campaign. Ryan backed Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who pursued Hillary Clinton as the chairman of a special select committee on the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, but infuriated some Republican partisans by rebuffing Trump on “Spygate.”

In his latest salvo on the Russia probe, Trump’s lawyer — former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — said Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is trying to frame Trump, the Associated Press reported.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/House-Speaker-Ryan-contradicts-Trump-s-claim-12973339.php