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White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats were expected to gather for a discussion aimed at addressing congressional requests.
Rosenstein, Wray and several other officials were spotted leaving the White House just before 4 p.m. ET.
According to Sanders and a source familiar with the meeting, it had been scheduled before — but took on a heightened public focus after — a weekend of tweets from the President.
“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Rosenstein said in the statement.
But the looming question is whether tapping Inspector General Michael Horowitz to examine the issue will do enough to de-escalate the controversy for now.
The last time the Justice Department referred the surveillance issue regarding Page to Horowitz, Trump lashed out, calling Horowitz an “Obama guy” despite the fact that he’s served in multiple administrations.
Clovis’ attorney, Victoria Toensing, told CNN on Monday that the source had reached out to Clovis but her client “didn’t know this guy from Adam.”
“Russia didn’t even come up,” Toensing added, saying the meeting was about China and took place around the end of August or early September 2016.
Rosenstein is overseeing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and whether there were any ties with the Trump campaign.
Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion.
CNN’s Gloria Borger, Maegan Vazquez and Dana Bash contributed to this report.
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