TRUMP WON’T INVESTIGATE CLINTON

President-elect disavows extreme right

WASHINGTON • After a campaign filled with Donald Trump’s denunciations of “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, the U.S. president-elect declared Tuesday that “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons; I really don’t,” and a top adviser said he had no interest in pursuing further investigations.

He also said he saw no potential conflicts of interest between his new job and his worldwide businesses, and he disavowed praise and support from extremist right wing groups.

Trump’s comments in an interview with The New York Times were tweeted out by Times reporters.

Earlier, adviser Kellyanne Conway strongly signalled to congressional Republicans that they should abandon their years of vigorous probes of Clinton’s email practices and actions at the time of the terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya. “If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing,” she told reporters at Trump Tower in New York.

But some of his conservative supporters strongly disagreed.

If Trump’s appointees do not follow through on his pledge to investigate Clinton for criminal violations, “it would be a betrayal of his promise to the American people to ‘drain the swamp’ of out-of-control corruption in Washington,” said the group Judicial Watch.

Conway said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Trump is “thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Conway was referring only to congressional investigations, or additionally to the Justice Department. FBI director James Comey has declared on two occasions there is no evidence warranting charges over her use of a private email account. Justice Department investigations are historically conducted without the influence or input of the White House.

In his interview with the Times, he was asked about a Friday-night event for an “altright” group in Washington during which attendees celebrated Trump’s election and gave Nazi salutes.

“I disavow and condemn them,” Trump said.

He said he saw no problems in working out any potential conflicts of interest between his companies and his White House post.

“In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this,” he said. But he also said he was “phasing that out now” and passing business operations on to his grown children.

Trump’s reversal on further investigations of the Clintons raised questions about the gulf between his fiery campaign promises and what he intends to do as the nation’s 45th president.