Trump Says He’d Consider Accepting Information on His Rivals From Foreign Governments

President Trump said Wednesday that his campaign might be willing to accept information from foreign governments that was damaging to his 2020 rivals, adding that he might not divulge such information to the FBI.

“It’s not an interference, they have information—I think I’d take it,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with ABC News. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI—if I thought there was something wrong.”

But Mr. Trump maintained that he believed there wasn’t anything wrong with listening.

“If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘We have information on your opponent’—oh, I think I’d want to hear it,” the president said.

Digging up information on rivals is standard practice among U.S. political campaigns, but receiving such information from a foreign entity without informing the FBI risks running afoul of laws intended to prevent foreign influence in the U.S. election process.

The remarks come as Mr. Trump still faces questions from Democrats about the 2016 presidential campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election. Former special counsel Robert Mueller found evidence of Russian interference, but his investigation didn’t establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

House Democrats have launched numerous investigations into the election and some have called for impeachment proceedings over allegations that Mr. Trump tried to obstruct Mr. Mueller’s probe—which Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied.

The president said in the ABC interview, conducted by George Stephanopoulos, that “the FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressmen, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”