Trump rails at familiar foes

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday excoriated his attorney general, the FBI, the special counsel and members of the intelligence community — citing conspiracy theories by conservatives even as he declared in a wide-ranging interview that he is “not a conspiratorial person.”

Trump used the Oval Office interview with The Hill newspaper to unleash some of his most deeply felt grievances against his critics, saying one of the “crowning achievements” of his presidency will be exposing what he calls corruption among the people investigating his administration.

“We have tremendous support, by the way, to expose something that is truly a cancer in our country,” the president said of federal law enforcement officials without citing evidence.

The president’s antipathy toward the intelligence community and the Justice Department has been clear for most of his time in the White House. But Trump’s verbal assault on his own law enforcement agencies during Tuesday’s interview was remarkable even by his standards. The interview was released Wednesday.

Trump made false assertions about the origins of the Russia investigation and the political makeup of its investigators, citing stories from Fox News personalities: “the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful, great Jeanine Pirro.”

The president escalated his drawn-out war with Attorney General Jeff Sessions over Trump’s assertion that Sessions had failed to protect him from the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether any Trump associates conspired with it.

“I don’t have an attorney general,” Trump declared — an extraordinary statement even for a president who has already called his attorney general weak and disloyal. “It’s very sad,” he continued.

(On Wednesday morning, Trump all but reversed himself. “We have an attorney general,” he said, in response to reporters’ questions. “I’m disappointed in the attorney general for many reasons.”)

Trump also continued his barrage against Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation. He said Mueller is conducting a “fraudulent” inquiry.

And he indicated that he asked this week for the declassification of court documents, FBI records and text messages in the Russia inquiry at the urging of members of Congress and “commentators that I respect” on cable news broadcasts.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials must still vet the declassified materials and redact sensitive information.