President Trump on Saturday renewed his attacks on former FBI Director James Comey, saying his firing of Comey in 2017 was “a great day for America” and claiming that the former FBI director was being protected by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The president lashed out at Comey in a series of tweets hours after the publication of a New York Times report that said the FBI opened an investigation into Trump after he fired Comey.
{mosads}”Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!” Trump tweeted.
“Funny thing about James Comey. Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike,” he continued. “My firing of James Comey was a great day for America.”
“He was a Crooked Cop … who is being totally protected by his best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats,” he claimed in a fourth tweet.
The president’s comments came hours after the Times reported Friday night that Trump’s actions immediately following Comey’s firing concerned FBI agents to the point that officials began probing if Trump was a threat to national security or secretly carrying out anti-American agendas on behalf of Russian officials.
In a statement Friday night, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the report of the investigation “absurd,” claiming that “unlike” his predecessor, Trump had enacted a tough foreign policy stance that confronted Russia on global issues.
“James Comey was fired because he’s a disgraced partisan hack,” she said, according to NBC.
“Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia.”
Comey’s firing in 2017 is a central focus of Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump attempted to obstruct the probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump and his allies have offered a series of changing explanations for his decision to fire Comey, which has complicated investigators’ effort to determine his intent.
The firing of Comey was reportedly used as justification for the investigation being opened, but FBI agents had already been concerned about the president’s ties to Russia, the Times reported.
The Russia investigation was taken over by Mueller when he was appointed as special counsel.
The president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, dismissed the Times report in his own statement claiming that investigators had found “nothing” linking Trump to Russia’s government.
“The fact that it goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing,” Giuliani said.