Responding to revelations that a top FBI official in the Russia investigation showed bias against him in text messages, President Trump said Friday that the episode was “disgraceful” and that he will reform the law-enforcement agency to be “bigger and better than ever.”
“It is very sad when you look at those documents, how they’ve done that is really, really disgraceful,” Mr. Trump told reporters on his way to an FBI academy graduation. “You have a lot of very angry people that are seeing it.”
FBI official Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the Hillary Clinton email probe, was reassigned from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation after officials found texts messages from him expressing support for Mrs. Clinton during the 2016 campaign and disparaging Mr. Trump.
Mr. Strzok had a big part in changing former FBI Director James B. Comey’s early draft language about Mrs. Clinton’s actions with her private email server from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.” He also conducted the FBI’s interview of Mrs. Clinton.
The president said the revelations prove his assertions that the FBI treated Mrs. Clinton too lightly.
“When you look at the Hillary Clinton investigation, I’ve been saying it for a long time, that was rigged system, folks,” Mr. Trump said. “It was rigged.”
As far as the multiple investigations into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Moscow, the president said “there is absolutely no collusion, that has been proven.”
“Even the Democrats admit there is no collusion,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re spending millions and millions of dollars. There is absolutely no collusion. I didn’t make a phone call to Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. Everybody knows it. That was a Democrat hoax. It was an excuse for losing the election. It should have never been this way, where they spend all these millions of dollars. We’ve got to get back to running the country.”
Asked if he would pardon former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty two weeks ago to lying to the FBI in the Russia probe, the president replied, “I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens. I can say this, when you look at what’s going on at the FBI and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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