Trump rips his own FBI director for agreeing with IG report

President Trump on Tuesday lashed out at Christopher Wray after the FBI director — whom he handpicked after firing James Comey — agreed with the conclusions of the Justice Department inspector general report that the FBI’s Russia probe was justified and not politically biased.

“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”

In an interview with ABC News, Wray was asked if he saw any evidence that the FBI unfairly targeted the Trump campaign.

“I do not,” Wray replied.

The long-awaited 434-page report cleared the FBI of political bias in opening an investigation into then-candidate Trump, debunking many of the conspiracy theories promoted by the president and his allies claiming that agents launched the probe as part of a partisan “witch hunt” or attempted “coup.” But it also sharply criticized the bureau for “serious performance errors” and other omissions in its applications for a secret surveillance warrant targeting a member of Trump’s campaign.

The report found that the FBI’s team conducting Crossfire Hurricane — the code name for the bureau’s investigation into links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin — improperly relied too heavily on allegations made by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who had been hired by an opposition research firm working for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

But the inspector general’s conclusions that the FBI’s original investigation was properly justified was immediately criticized by Attorney General William Barr and his handpicked investigator, John Durham, who is conducting a broader criminal inquiry into the FBI’s and CIA’s conduct in the Russia probe.

“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday shortly after the report was released, Trump called its details “far worse than I would have ever thought possible.”

“It’s an embarrassment to our country,” the president said of the findings. “It’s dishonest, it’s everything that a lot of people thought it would be, except far worse.

“This was an attempted overthrow, and a lot of people were in on it and they got caught, they got caught red-handed,” Trump added.

The inspector’s general report was not the only thing on the president’s mind Tuesday. House Democrats scheduled a Tuesday morning press conference where they were expected to unveil articles of impeachment against Trump over his dealings with Ukraine.

“To Impeach a President who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness!” Trump tweeted, adding: “#2020Election.”

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