Ronald Klain: Why Trump may have flip-flopped on Clinton

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Photo / AP

On November 22, 2016 — a few weeks after winning the presidency — Donald Trump announced a stunning reversal. After months of "lock her up," Trump said he opposed further investigation of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, as it would be "very, very divisive" for the country and Clinton had already "suffered greatly in many different ways".

A year later, Trump has all but ordered his Justice Department to reopen the investigation into Clinton's emails and to explore the fantabulous theory that the Clinton Foundation somehow got nine federal agencies to tamper with the review of a commercial uranium transaction.

This week, he called for jailing a former Clinton aide and prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey. Trump's allies are calling for an investigation of "high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent" Trump's election.

Perhaps it is an effort to confuse and deflect from the rising tide of accusations against Trump and his cohorts. Perhaps it is just another reflection of Trump's erratic nature.

But I suspect there is another reason Trumpland has reversed course. Trump and his allies are proposing a bargain, with a not-so-subtle message to Democrats: "If you don't want your people to be investigated, remain quiet as we shut down the congressional investigations and undercut Special Counsel Robert Mueller. If my people are going to be investigated, then so will yours."

This indecent proposal needs to be considered against the backdrop of the Trump-Russia mess. We learned last year that Trump's narrow 2016 victory was indelibly stained by Russian help. We know Trump both sought help from Russia and made active use of Russian interventions in this campaign. And among the things that point toward the possibility that Trump and his people were engaged in as-yet undisclosed explicit collusion with Russia is the intensity of their efforts to shut down investigations into what happened.

Of course, we do not know whether there was some explicit agreement between the Russians and the Trump campaign or whether both sides pursued mutually beneficial steps out of a commonality of interests. We cannot know what Mueller will find. But the actions of Trump and his allies tell us a lot about what they fear could be found.

● Klain served as a White House aide to presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and was a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.