House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that President Trump is new to government and may not be familiar with the protocol of the White House’s relationship with the federal law enforcement branches.
“The president is new at this,” Mr. Ryan said at his weekly briefing. “He’s new to government, so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationship between the FBI, DOJ and White Houses.”
He also added that his impression of former FBI Director James Comey’s written testimony explains a lot of the president’s exasperation with the Russia investigation.
“People I think now realize why the president is so frustrated,” Mr. Ryan said. “When the FBI director tells him on three different occasion that he’s not under investigation, yet the speculation swirls around the political system that he is, that’s frustrating.”
When asked about briefings he received on the Russia case, Mr. Ryan said he would not comment on that or the claims Mr. Comey made about a “loyalty pledge” from Mr. Trump.
“I’m not going to comment on classified briefings,” he said. “I think there’s going to be a ’he said, he said’ on this and I don’t have any comment on that.”
Mr. Ryan did comment on health care saying he didn’t expect a lot of big changes from the Senate since the bill was written to conform to their rules to prevent a filibuster.
“Reconciliation can only let you do so much so I’m really not expecting massive changes because of the reconciliation rules,” he said. “Look how tightly we wrote this bill to conform with the Senate rules so it cannot be filibustered. Given that this bill was written to conform with the Senate rules I don’t think there’s going to be a tremendous amount of change because it has to conform with the Senate rules.”
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
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