Ryan contradicts Trump’s claim FBI planted ‘spy’

President insisted in tweets agency sent informant ‘to help Crooked Hillary win’

In a break with President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday that he agrees there is no evidence that the FBI planted a “spy” in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to hurt his chances at the polls.

He also issued a careful warning about Trump’s recent assertion that he has the authority to pardon himself.

“I don’t know the technical answer to that question, but I think obviously the answer is he shouldn’t and no one is above the law,” Ryan told reporters on Wednesday.

The comments come after Trump insisted in a series of angry tweets last month that the agency planted a spy “to help Crooked Hillary win,” referring to his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

There is a growing sense that Republicans are uncomfortable with those statements. Ryan, a representative of Wisconsin, is one of three congressional Republicans who have now contradicted Trump on the spying matter, including House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr.

Ryan, Gowdy and Burr all attended classified briefings on the matter late last month, following reports that the FBI used an informant in its Russian election meddling investigation to speak to members of the Trump campaign who had possible connections to Russia.

Trump said it was “starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in US history.”