FILE - In this Thursday, May 17, 2018, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, in Washington. Trump said he will "demand" that the Justice... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Thursday, May 17, 2018, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, in Washington. Trump said he will "demand" that the Justice Department open an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his presidential campaign, an extraordinary... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Thursday, May 17, 2018, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, in Washington. Trump said he will "demand" that the Justice Department open an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his presidential campaign, an extraordinary... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Thursday, May 17, 2018, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, in Washington. Trump said he will "demand" that the Justice... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he will "demand" that the Justice Department investigate whether the FBI infiltrated his presidential campaign, an extraordinary order that came hours before his legal team said the special counsel indicated the investigation into the president could be concluded by September. 
 
 Trump tweeted Sunday: "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's demand puts further pressure on the Justice Department, which later Sunday asked its inspector general to expand an existing investigation into the Russia probe by examining whether there was any improper politically motivated surveillance. It comes as the White House tries to combat the threat posed by special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. 
 
 The president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said Mueller recently shared a timetable that suggested his probe could end by Sept. 1 if Trump were to sit for an interview in July, which is the legal team's new working plan. 
 
 "We said to them, 'If we're going to be interviewed in July, how much time until the report gets issued?'" Giuliani told The Associated Press on Sunday, referring to the report Mueller is expected to issue to Congress at the conclusion of his investigation. "They said September, which is good for everyone, because no one wants this to drag into the midterms." 
 
 Giuliani said he did not want a repeat of what happened in 2016, when FBI Director James Comey announced in the campaign's final days that he was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, a decision Democrats believe cost Clinton the race. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, also said Mueller's team indicated that the entire probe could end by September, not just its investigation into potential obstruction of justice. 
 
 "This would be the culmination of the investigation into the president," Giuliani said. 
 
 The special counsel's office did not respond to a request for comment. 
 
 It is not certain that Trump will sit for an interview with Mueller, though the president has publicly said he would. Giuliani said a decision would not be made until after Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, which is slated for June 12. Giuliani said Sunday the two sides "were getting closer" to agreeing on the parameters on a potential interview but would not put the odds of it happening at better than 50/50. 
 
 Giuliani's apparent attempt to publicly pressure Mueller on the timeline amid interview negotiations came just hours after Trump's demand for a new inquiry, which moved beyond his usual blustery accusations of institutional wrongdoing and into the realm of applying presidential pressure on the Justice Department, a move few of his predecessors have made. 
 
 Trump made the order amid days of public venting about the special counsel investigation, which he has deemed a "witch hunt" that he says has yielded no evidence of collusion between his campaign and Russia. In response, the Justice Department moved Sunday to defuse a growing confrontation with the White House by asking its watchdog to investigate whether there was inappropriate surveillance. 
 
 It was not immediately clear if that move would satisfy Trump, or if any further demands could lead to a confrontation with FBI Director Christopher Wray or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Mueller investigation. Rosenstein released a statement Sunday saying, "If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action." 
 
 The Justice Department probe had begun in March at the request of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and congressional Republicans. Sessions and the lawmakers had urged Inspector General Michael Horowitz to review whether FBI and Justice Department officials abused their surveillance powers by using information compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy, and paid for by Democrats to justify monitoring Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to Trump. 
 
 Horowitz said his office will look at those claims as well as communications between Steele and DOJ and FBI officials. 
 
 Trump did not elaborate on the promised "demand," which he included in one of a series of tweets he sent throughout the day Sunday. On Saturday, Trump tweeted, "If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal." He said only the release or review of documents the House Intelligence Committee is seeking from the Justice Department "can give conclusive answers." 
 
 Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Trump's claim of an embedded spy "nonsense." 
 
 "His 'demand' DOJ investigate something they know to be untrue is an abuse of power, and an effort to distract from his growing legal problems," Schiff tweeted. "Never mind that DOJ has warned that lives and alliances are at risk. He doesn't care." 
 
 Trump's extraordinary demand of the Justice Department alarmed many observers, who felt it not only violated presidential protocol but also could have a chilling effect on federal law enforcement or its use of informants. Giuliani defended the president's actions. 
 
 "As the president's lawyer, I can't be concerned on what effect it may have," he said. "To me, there's not much of a difference between an informant's ongoing collection of information in a surreptitious way or a spy. 
 
 "If this guy was an FBI implant into the campaign," Giuliani said, "that's as offensive as Watergate." 
 
 The New York Times was the first to report that the FBI had an informant who met several times with Trump campaign officials who had suspicious contacts linked to Russia. 
 
 Giuliani said the information discovered by the source should eventually be made public and released to Congress, even if the source's identity is kept confidential. 
 
 The GOP-led House Intelligence Committee closed its Russian meddling probe last month, saying it found no evidence of collusion or coordination between Trump's campaign and Russia. Schiff and other committee Democrats were furious and argued that Republicans had not subpoenaed many witnessed they considered essential to the committee's work. 
 
 Sunday was not the first time that Trump accused his predecessor of politically motivated activity against him. 
 
 Without substantiation, Trump tweeted in March 2017 that former President Barack Obama had conducted surveillance the previous October at Trump Tower, the New York skyscraper where Trump ran his campaign and transition and maintains a residence. Comey later testified to Congress that internal reviews found no information to support the president's tweets. Trump fired Comey over the bureau's Russia investigation. 
 
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 Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter/com/@JonLemire and Superville at http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap ||||| “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got,” Trey Gowdy said in an interview on Fox News. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo FBI was right to deploy informant, senior GOP lawmaker says 
 
 A senior House Republican who was part of a highly classified Justice Department briefing last week said on Tuesday that the FBI acted properly when it deployed an informant to gather information from advisers to President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. 
 
 Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said last week’s briefing, convened by the Justice Department under pressure from Trump, convinced him even further that the FBI’s information-gathering steps were appropriate. 
 
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 “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got,” he said in an interview on Fox News. He added that the information also suggested that the effort had “nothing to do with Donald Trump.” 
 
 Recent reports have suggested that an FBI informant — a former academic who worked in several presidential administrations — approached multiple members of Trump's foreign policy team, including advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Trump has seized on that news to suggest nefarious surveillance, but Justice Department officials say informants are a staple of counterintelligence investigations like the one the FBI had launched to investigate Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. 
 
 Gowdy said he understood Trump‘s frustration about public rhetoric on the Russia investigation by Democrats and intelligence officials, like former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. But he noted that the current top officials at the agencies, including FBI Director Chris Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, “now are all Trump appointees.“ 
 
 Gowdy’s comments are a significant pushback against the president and his allies who have contended that the FBI’s use of an informant amounted to explosive political proof that the Obama administration embedded a spy in his campaign — an accusation that hasn’t been backed up by any available evidence. 
 
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 According to Gowdy, the classified details also cut against the theory. In fact, he said, the FBI’s actions appeared to support what Trump himself has at times demanded: that investigators pursue any attempts by Russia to infiltrate his campaign and efforts by the Kremlin to interfere in the election. 
 
 “It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said: ‘I want you to do, find it out,’” Gowdy said. He added: “President Trump himself in the Comey memos said, ‘If anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it.’ Sounds to me like that was exactly what the FBI did.” 
 
 Moments after Gowdy’s interview, Trump took the stage at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, and insisted that his campaign had been “infiltrated” by political opponents, reiterating the allegation that he has leveled in recent weeks as part of an effort to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. 
 
 Gowdy, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been a key House point man on the most sensitive aspects of the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election — and he has been an envoy for the committee and House leadership in meetings between senior Justice Department officials about allegations by Trump and allies of misconduct by the FBI in the 2016 election. 
 
 Gowdy also urged Trump to testify before Mueller, noting that all of the information he’s seen so far suggests that, so far, the president is not a target of the inquiry. 
 
 “If he were my client … I would say, if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you need to sit down with Mueller,” he said. 
 
 Gowdy said that Trump's repeated statements about a “spy” in his campaign was creating another opportunity for Mueller to question his facts. 
 
 “The president should have access to the best legal minds in the country,” he said. “I think he should take advantage of those.” 
 
 Two of the Trump campaign officials who were approached by the FBI informant — Page and Sam Clovis — appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night. When pressed by host Sean Hannity about whether he had been approached by a “spy,” Page replied, “I’m not sure, Sean.” 
 
 Clovis recounted receiving outreach from the informant on Sept. 1, 2016, but said the informant didn’t pump him for information. He said, instead, that the informant seemed to want to connect with Papadopoulos, whose interactions are believed to have led to the opening of the FBI’s Russia investigation. 
 
 Papadopoulos reportedly told an Australian diplomat in April 2016 that Russians had derogatory material on Trump’s Democratic opponent in the election, Hillary Clinton, a tip that was relayed to the FBI two months later. That tip was the basis for the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump campaign associates’ contacts with Russia. ||||| A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans. 
 
 A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee's high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven't informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House's general counsel. 
 
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 The people familiar with Nunes' plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence. 
 
 That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign — or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded. (The president has said he is not currently considering firing Mueller.) 
 
 Republicans in the Nunes-led group suspect the FBI and DOJ have worked either to hurt Trump or aid his former campaign rival Hillary Clinton, a sense that has pervaded parts of the president’s inner circle. Trump has long called the investigations into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election a “witch hunt,” and on Tuesday, his son Donald Trump Jr. told a crowd in Florida the probes were part of a “rigged system” by “people at the highest levels of government” who were working to hurt the president. 
 
 The sources familiar with the separate inquiry said it was born out of steadily building frustration with the Justice Department's refusal to share details of the way the Trump dossier was used to launch the FBI's investigation of his campaign team last year — or whether it was the basis for any court-ordered surveillance of Trump associates. 
 
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 The group is relying on the same documents and testimony provided by top Obama administration officials — such as former acting attorney general Sally Yates, former attorney general Loretta Lynch and former UN ambassador Samantha Power — who were grilled as part of the intelligence committee's broader Russia probe. 
 
 It's unclear how many members of the intelligence committee are participating in the side effort. Lawmakers on the full committee interviewed by POLITICO refused to discuss it. 
 
 "I don't talk about what we do behind closed doors," said Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who's leading the intelligence committee's bipartisan Russia probe. "I'm not going to talk about that," said Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), another member of the panel. 
 
 A congressional aide with knowledge of the meetings said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was not among the participants. ”While he does believe the FBI and DOJ have recently made decisions worth looking into, he is and will always be a defender of the FBI, DOJ and the special counsel," the aide said. 
 
 Nunes' office declined to comment about the effort, but he has aired his suspicions about the law enforcement agencies before. 
 
 "I hate to use the word corrupt, but they’ve become at least so dirty that who’s watching the watchmen? Who’s investigating these people?" he said in a Fox News interview earlier this month. "There is no one." 
 
 DOJ and FBI officials also declined to comment. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the FBI and Mueller's team at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. "The special counsel investigation is not a witch hunt," he said. 
 
 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he wasn't aware of the Nunes effort but said it fit with what he sees as an increasingly destructive bent in Republicans’ rhetoric and actions. 
 
 "I think what we are seeing in our committee ... is an effort to attack the Department of Justice, an effort to attack the FBI, to attack Bob Mueller, is an effort to undermine the investigations and these institutions out of fear of what they’ll find and try to discredit them in advance," he said. "It’s a pernicious thing to do that will ultimately inflict long-term damage on these institutions." 
 
 The Nunes-led group is the latest evidence of an increasingly toxic and bruising confrontation between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the highest ranks of the justice system. Some Hill Republicans are irate about the Justice Department's refusal to provide more details about its investigation of Trump associates' ties to Russia. They're also frothing over the FBI's handling of the Trump-Russia dossier, which GOP lawmakers have openly mocked as "discredited" and "disproven.” 
 
 In recent weeks, GOP lawmakers have berated top Justice Department officials and threatened to hold them in contempt of Congress, and a couple of rank-and-file members described ongoing investigations of Trump associates in startling terms — including as a potential "coup" attempt. On Wednesday, Fox News reported that Nunes intends to subpoena senior FBI agents connected to the dossier. 
 
 Earlier this week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called for the FBI's deputy director, Andrew McCabe, to be replaced amid claims by Republicans of anti-Trump bias infecting the bureau. And Gowdy, the chairman of the House oversight committee, joined House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte on Tuesday to request interviews with senior FBI officials as early as Thursday — which some lawmakers say is the precursor to subpoenas. 
 
 To Democrats, the GOP offensive is an attempt to distract from the investigation of Trump associates by Mueller, who has already indicted Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and secured a guilty plea from his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. There are indications he's investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, whose exit led to Mueller taking over the Russia probe. 
 
 The more dangerous Mueller's probe has seemed to become to the White House, the louder the attacks have gotten from Trump allies on Capitol Hill, Democrats say. 
 
 “Republicans are terrified that Special Counsel Mueller is getting closer to the truth, and they are desperate to grind his investigation to a halt — even if they undermine the foundations of our democracy," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a statement after Republicans requested the FBI interviews. 
 
 GOP lawmakers have become increasingly fixated on the FBI's use of the dossier describing sometimes salacious allegations of Trump's ties to the Kremlin. The document was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Under pressure from Nunes, Fusion revealed that funding for the dossier project was provided by Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The House general counsel helped argue on behalf of Nunes in court to compel the release of Fusion's funding information. 
 
 In January, then-FBI Director Comey briefed Trump about the dossier prior to his inauguration, and the contents subsequently leaked in the media after circulating in Washington for months. Trump has rejected the allegations as fiction, and Republicans on Capitol Hill have largely dismissed it as a "discredited" or "false" document, though investigators have spent months attempting to verify its contents. 
 
 Still, Republicans on the intelligence and judiciary committees have increasingly wondered aloud whether the FBI — which had a longstanding relationship with Steele — used the allegations in his dossier to obtain surveillance warrants to spy on Trump campaign associates. They also want to know if the agency paid Steele for his work at the same time he was being paid by the Clinton campaign. 
 
 In recent weeks, Republicans have grown more vocal in their accusations that the FBI, DOJ and Mueller’s team are biased. They've railed against political donations that some of Mueller’s attorneys have made to Democrats. And more recently, they've pointed to a series of text messages — revealed by the DOJ inspector general — in which two senior FBI officials, who were previously assigned to the special counsel’s office, bashed Trump. 
 
 Schiff said committee rules require consultation between Republicans and Democrats, but House Speaker Paul Ryan must enforce bipartisan cooperation if he wants it to occur. 
 
 "And at this point, you have to conclude that he doesn’t," Schiff said. Ryan’s office declined to comment.
– President Trump took another leap into uncharted territory Sunday with a demand for the Justice Department to investigate whether the FBI infiltrated his 2016 campaign. Trump tweeted that he would officially demand Monday that the department "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!" In what the Washington Post describes as an effort to avoid a bigger showdown, the Justice Department bowed to the pressure late Sunday, saying its inspector general would investigate whether political motivations had tainted the investigation of alleged Russian links to Trump's campaign, which is now being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. "If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action," said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump's tweet followed reports that an FBI informant had talked to Trump campaign advisers with alleged links to Russia, which the president called a "really big deal" in a tweet Saturday, Politico reports. Analysts described his demand for an investigation of the investigation as unprecedented. "I can't think of a prior example of a sitting president ordering the Justice Department to conduct an investigation like this one," University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck tells the New York Times. "That's little more than a transparent effort to undermine an ongoing investigation."