DONALD Trump has disputed findings by the Justice Department that former FBI director James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe was not politically motivated.
The US president declared that the FBI was biased “at the top level” and “plotting against my election”.
The department’s inspector general report, while critical of the FBI and Comey personally, did not find evidence that political bias tainted the investigation of Clinton’s email practices in the months and days leading up to Trump’s election.
But after tweeting that he did a “great service” to the nation by firing Comey, Trump marched out to the White House North Lawn to talk with Fox & Friends, claiming the report “totally” exonerated him. He then pointed to accomplishments he said he has achieved and complained about not getting proper credit.
Then he turned to other reporters and went over the same list.
On the inspector general report that found no political bias in the FBI’s final conclusions, he said: “The end result was wrong. There was total bias.
“Comey was the ringleader of this whole, you know, den of thieves. It was a den of thieves,” he added.
Trump’s comments followed the 500-page report that said Comey was “insubordinate” in his handling of the Clinton investigation because he broke agency protocol.
The report also rebuked FBI officials for exchanging anti-Trump text messages during the 2016 campaign.
But it said: “We found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, the law and past department practice.”
Trump’s supporters have argued the findings are proof of political bias at the FBI that then tainted the Russia investigation, first led by the FBI and now by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump said that the Mueller probe “has been totally discredited”.
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