President Donald Trump said Friday the inspector general report examining the Clinton email probe “totally exonerates me” and that it showed former FBI Director James Comey was the “ringleader” of a “den of thieves.”
Trump’s remarks about Comey, who Trump fired in May 2017, follow Thursday’s release of an inspector general report that found that Comey was insubordinate in his handling of the Clinton email investigation during the 2016 presidential election.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Speaking to “Fox and Friends” from the White House North Lawn, the president said that the inspector general report showed “Comey was the ringleader of this whole den of thieves, it was a den of thieves.”
His comments echo an April post on Twitter in which the president said that “McCabe was totally controlled by Comey – McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”
In March, Trump fired former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, who had worked in government for decades, hours before his planned retirement. McCabe is now suing the Justice Department over his termination.
“They all work for Comey, and Comey knew what was going on,” Trump said Friday. “McCabe knew what was going on, and McCabe is up for criminal right now.”
Trump’s criticism of McCabe centered on McCabe’s perceived ties to Hillary Clinton. McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received campaign contributions from Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe during her failed 2015 Virginia state senate bid.
“The fact that McAuliffe supported Dr. McCabe’s campaign, and was a known associate of Hillary Clinton, did not create any connection between the Clinton email investigation and Dr. McCabe’s financial interests,” the inspector general report concluded.
Trump also criticized text messages sent by investigators working on the Clinton email probe. One investigator texted that “We’ll stop” Trump from becoming president, according to the inspector general report.
“If you look at the head investigator saying ‘we have to stop Trump from becoming president,’ well Trump became president,” Trump said Friday.
Asked whether he would push for Comey’s prosecution, the president demurred. He said he would “never want to get involved in that,” but noted that “what [Comey] did was criminal, what he did was a terrible thing to the people.”
“Should he be locked up? Let somebody make a determination,” Trump said.
