Trump claims FBI bias against him

In his first public comments on the report, Trump said in a pair of tweets early Friday that he had done “a great service” for the American people by firing Comey last year.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that a new internal Justice Department report proved there had been FBI bias against him before the 2016 presidential election, citing “vicious” texts between investigators and findings that he said illustrated “criminal” behavior by the bureau’s former director.

Trump also said he thinks special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s possible ties with Russia is “very biased” and has reservations about being interviewed by Mueller, raising more questions on whether he will consent to an interview as part of the investigation.

In a wide-ranging interview Friday morning with Fox and Friends, Trump said that he did not want to get involved in Justice Department matters but that what former FBI Director James Comey had done “was a terrible thing to the people.”

“I would never want to get involved in that,” Trump said when he was asked if Comey should be “locked up.”

“Certainly he, they just seem like criminal acts to me. What he did was criminal.” He added: “What he did was so bad in terms of our Constitution, in terms of the well-being of our country. What he did was horrible.”

Trump continued: “Should he be locked up? Let somebody make a determination.”

“Comey was the ringleader of this whole, you know, den of thieves. It was a den of thieves,” he said.

The inspector general’s report, released Thursday, covered the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and was anxiously awaited by Trump. It concluded that Comey was insubordinate and broke with long-standing policy in his handling of the Clinton email investigation. But it found no evidence that Comey showed political bias in his oversight of the investigation. The report made no accusations of criminal wrongdoing.

Comey was criticized in the report for his decision, despite the discouragement of the Justice Department, to reveal to Congress that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s private server after the discovery of new emails.

The FBI obtained a warrant nine days before the presidential election to review those emails, found on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. — the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin — and ultimately determined there was nothing that changed its original conclusion.

The report faulted the FBI for failing to act with more urgency in reviewing emails from Weiner’s laptop, saying the inaction had “potentially far-reaching consequences.” Clinton supporters say her name could have been cleared well before the election had the FBI moved faster to review the emails. Comey said had he known earlier about the laptop’s import it might have affected his decision to notify Congress.

Clinton supporters believe Comey’s actions, far from hurting Trump, may well have torpedoed her chance of becoming president.

The report also notes that Comey, despite chiding Clinton for mishandling government business, occasionally used personal email himself to discuss FBI matters.

“But my emails,” Clinton said, reacting in a three-word tweet.

In his first public comments on the report, Trump said in a pair of tweets early Friday that he had done “a great service” for the American people by firing Comey last year.

“The IG Report is a total disaster for Comey, his minions and sadly, the FBI,” Trump wrote. “Comey will now officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI. I did a great service to the people in firing him. Good Instincts. [FBI Director] Christopher Wray will bring it proudly back!”

The president’s initial stated reasoning for firing the FBI director was that he believed Comey had mishandled the Clinton investigation.

Earlier this month, the president asked, “When will people start saying, ‘thank you, Mr. President, for firing James Comey?’” The president has given other justifications for the firing, including that he did it in order to relieve pressure from the FBI’s inquiry into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.

FBI AGENT’S TEST

Comey’s firing on May 9 of last year was the first in a series of steps that led to the appointment of an independent special counsel. Mueller and his team continue to oversee the investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s meddling in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The inquiry, which Trump regularly calls “phony” and a “witch hunt,” has ensnared some of Trump’s former aides and has been a dark cloud over his administration.

Trump also cited communications between FBI agents that were disclosed in the report, saying, “Doesn’t get any lower than that!”

Trump focused on a threeword text message written in August 2016 by FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was overseeing the bureau’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Strzok’s text was in response to a text from an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page.

“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right?” Page asked in a text to Strzok. “Right?!” Strzok, replied, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

On Friday, Trump said, “If you look at — the head investigator is saying, ‘We have to stop Trump from becoming president.’ Well, Trump became president.”

The president has been building a public case that the FBI is part of a deep-state conspiracy with the goal of ousting him from the highest office in the country.

Even though the Justice Department report had nothing to do with the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties with Russia, one of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, said Thursday that Mueller’s investigation should be suspended. Giuliani also predicted that Strzok would be in jail in the coming days.

“If you read the IG report, I’ve been totally exonerated,” Trump said, responding to questions from reporters later Friday morning. The report did not examine or make any conclusions about the continuing special counsel investigation.

Trump said he did not have plans to suspend the Mueller investigation, and he repeated his contention that the inquiry was being conducted by people with conflicts of interest.

Trump’s legal team has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the president would sit for an interview with Mueller. Giuliani has suggested that a presidential interview with Mueller may not happen in the aftermath of the inspector general’s report, which he contends shows the investigation has been tainted and biased against the president.

Wray said “nothing” in the report “impugns” the integrity of the FBI workforce and that while the report found “errors in judgment” and policy violations, it found no evidence of political bias or improper consideration “actually impacting the investigations under review.”

Trump sought to further discredit the probe Friday, saying the “problem with the Mueller investigation is everybody’s got massive conflicts.” He reiterated his long-standing contention there was no collusion between his campaign and Russians.

“Now, here’s the good news — I did nothing wrong, there was no collusion, there was no obstruction,” Trump said. “The IG report yesterday went a long way to show that. And I think that the Mueller investigation has been totally discredited.”