President renews attack on FBI in wake of ‘spygate’

DONALD TRUMP escalated his feud with former FBI director James Comey yesterday, and accused the agency of being part of the “criminal deep state”.

It followed the FBI’S reported use of a retired Cambridge university professor to glean information about whether Mr Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

Stefan Halper, 73, has been named in US media reports as an FBI source who approached three Trump campaign advisers – Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis – in the summer of 2016.

The American professor has made no comment on the reports. The FBI declined to comment.

The US president, writing on Twitter, said: “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history! If the person placed very early into my campaign wasn’t a SPY put there by the previous administration for political purposes, how come such a seemingly massive amount of money was paid for services rendered – many times higher than normal.”

There was no evidence the payments to Prof Halper, totalling more than $1 million (£750,000) over five years, which Trump is referring to were for anything other than academic research.

Mr Comey was head of the FBI at the time of the investigation into Mr Trump’s campaign. He was fired when Mr Trump became president.

Responding to the president on Twitter, Mr Comey said: “The FBI’S use of Confidential Human Sources (the actual term) is tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country.”