White House just inflicted a serious wound on itself

President Donald Trump on Friday unleashed another fearsome fusillade of tweets, this time blasting the FBI directly for failing to control leaks.

“The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security ‘leakers' that have permeated our government for a long time,” Trump said. “They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S.” Trump closed with a demand that the leakers be caught: “FIND NOW.”

Trump's rage is misdirected.

Whatever culpability the FBI bears for its leaking, the better target for Trump's anger right now is the White House itself. The news Trump was apparently responding to is a self-inflicted White House wound.

As CNN first reported, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus personally asked the FBI to publicly debunk recent media reports of contacts between Russia and Trump campaign aides during the campaign:

“The FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential campaign, multiple U.S. officials briefed on the matter tell CNN.

“But a White House official said late Thursday that the request was only made after the FBI indicated to the White House it did not believe the reporting to be accurate.

White House officials had sought the help of the bureau and other agencies investigating the Russia matter to say that the reports were wrong and that there had been no contacts, the officials said.

“The direct communications between the White House and the FBI were unusual because of decade-old restrictions on such contacts. Such a request from the White House is a violation of procedures that limit communications with the FBI on pending investigations.”

The White House has explained this by offering an account that goes this way: FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe told Priebus at a recent meeting that the New York Times report on those contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign was “overblown.” Priebus then asked McCabe to assist in getting the real story out.

After mulling the request, McCabe declined, the White House says, because “the FBI did not want to get in the business of calling balls and strikes on reporting.”

By the way, we don't know whether the FBI actually told Priebus that the Times story was overblown, or even whether the FBI actually concluded this in the first place. All we know is that Priebus says the FBI did these things.

But what is not in dispute is that the Trump White House asked the FBI to go public about an ongoing investigation in which the targets appear to be members of the Trump campaign. In particular, Priebus asked the FBI to go public with its supposed belief that the Times's description of investigators' determinations was overblown.

According to Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, that's potentially a problem: “The White House is simply not permitted to pressure the FBI to make public statements about a pending investigation of the president and his advisers.” Or, as as NBC News's First Read crew notes, it's questionable that the White House is now “asking the FBI to publicly knock down a story.”

To be clear, this was a request from a top Trump adviser that the FBI publicly knock down a story about an ongoing investigation into conduct by Trump's campaign. And after the FBI refused this request, Trump blasted the FBI on Twitter.

Former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller argued to Chris Hayes last night that Priebus should step down over his conduct, because it was “absolutely inappropriate” and “crosses every line.”

All of this provides those who want a full accounting of this whole affair with an opening - that is, to renew demands that the FBI testify as part of ongoing congressional probes into it.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is already pushing for the committee's probe (into potential contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, or even possible collusion between them) to solicit testimony from the FBI about what it has learned from its own inquiry.

It's unlikely that committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the GOP congressman who controls this investigation, will go along with such a request.

But this latest turn in the saga invites a whole new round of questions about what the Trump White House privately asked the FBI to do in terms of going public about an ongoing probe into the Trump campaign's conduct.

Theoretically, this should make it harder for Republicans to continue to resist a full accounting, one that includes cooperation from the FBI.

Greg Sargent is a blogger and opinion writer for the Washington Post.