JAKE TAPPER (HOST): President Trump just took the unusual step of pushing the Justice Department to lift a gag order on an undercover FBI informant. The lawyer for that informant says that he wants to tell Congress about a bribery case involving Russians trying to gain influence in the American uranium industry during the Obama administration and efforts to seek favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton. It's an unusual move, perhaps even rife with conflicts of interest for any president to instruct the Justice Department to take any action having to do with a case that involves the president's political opponents. Which is not to say that there are not legitimate questions lawmakers might have about this issue, it's also fair to say, however, that as a political matter, the Trump administration and its allies would much rather talk about anything having to do with the Clintons than they would about special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into their own team's conduct. And the more extreme voices on the president's favorite channel have been talking quite a bit about this controversy, saying things like this:



[BEGIN VIDEO]

SEBASTIAN GORKA: If this had happened in the 1950s, there would be people up on treason charges right now. The Rosenbergs, OK, this is equivalent to what the Rosenbergs did and those people got the chair. Think about it, giving away nuclear capability to our enemies, that's what we're talking about. 

[END VIDEO]



TAPPER: It's not actually what we're talking about here on planet Earth, but whether the president was influenced by the cacophonous shrieks from the fever swamps or by congressional Republicans expressing reasonable frustrations that they could not conduct their oversight, Mr. Trump stepped in and intervened. 

Previously:

Sebastian Gorka says Hillary Clinton should be convicted of treason like the Rosenbergs: “Those people got the chair”

How Steve Bannon and Sean Hannity's ginned-up Hillary Clinton uranium story became a congressional investigation

Study: Hannity’s treatment of Trump's Russia scandal takes an authoritarian turn