Trump tweets long attack on FBI over inquiry into possible aid to Russia

President Donald Trump on Saturday unleashed an extended assault on the FBI and the special counsel’s investigation, knitting together a comprehensive alternative story in which he had been framed by disgraced “losers” at the bureau’s highest levels.

>>Nicholas Fandos and Michael S SchmidtThe New York Times
Published : 13 Jan 2019, 06:01 PM
Updated : 13 Jan 2019, 10:07 PM

In a two-hour span starting at 7 a.m., the president made a series of false claims on Twitter about his adversaries and the events surrounding the inquiry. He was responding to a report in The New York Times that, after he fired James Comey as FBI director in 2017, the bureau began investigating whether the president had acted on behalf of Russia.

In his tweets, the president accused Hillary Clinton, without evidence, of breaking the law by lying to the FBI. He claimed that Comey was corrupt and best friends with special counsel Robert Mueller. He said Mueller was employing a team of Democrats — another misleading assertion — bent on taking him down.

Hours later, Trump continued his broadside on a friendly television venue, Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News. Asked “are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?” Trump did not directly answer the question.

“I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked,” he said by telephone. “I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written.”

He also denied a report in The Washington Post that he had taken extensive steps to conceal from other high-ranking officials his conversations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia over the past two years.

Rep. Eliot L. Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said his panel would hold hearings on “the mysteries swirling around Trump’s bizarre relationship with Putin and his cronies, and how those dark dealings affect our national security.”

In his Twitter outburst earlier in the day, Trump accused the FBI of opening “for no reason” and “with no proof” an investigation in 2017 into whether he had been working against American interests on behalf of Russia, painting his own actions toward Russia as actually “FAR tougher” than those of his predecessors.

Comey responded Saturday on Twitter with a quotation attributed to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”

© 2019 New York Times News Service