Trump suggests he should have extra time as president, in rant over ‘dishonest fool’ Comey’s leaks
Donald Trump has suggested he should be given “stolen time back” due to “how unfairly” he has been treated by the FBI and its investigations into him.
“The disastrous IG Report on James Comey shows, in the strongest of terms, how unfairly I, and tens of millions of great people who support me, were treated,” Mr Trump tweeted on Friday morning.
“Our rights and liberties were illegally stripped away by this dishonest fool. We should be given our stolen time back?”
The president has mentioned serving longer than the legal eight years several times, joking in April that he could remain in the White House for “at least for 10 or 14 years.” The 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution prevents presidents from serving more than two terms.
He continued: “The fact that James Comey was not prosecuted for the absolutely horrible things he did just shows how fair and reasonable Attorney General Bill Barr is. So many people and experts that I have watched and read would have taken an entirely different course. Comey got Lucky!”
On Thursday, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report saying that former FBI director James Comey violated agency policies when he retained and leaked a set of memos he took documenting meetings with Mr Trump in early 2017. Still, the IG found ”no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.”
The report focuses on seven memos Mr Comey wrote between January and April 2017 about conversations with the newly-elected president Trump that he found unnerving or unusual, including a Trump Tower briefing related to the president’s ties to Moscow, and a dinner where Mr Trump asked Mr Comey for “loyalty”.
There was also a meeting during which Mr Comey says Mr Trump asked him to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser. Flynn subsequently pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and is awaiting sentence.
Mr Trump fired Mr Comey in May of 2017. Robert Mueller‘s investigation into Mr Trump’s ties with Russia began shortly after.
The report is the second to criticise Mr Comey’s actions during his time as director, following a rebuke from a different inspector general over decisions he made during the highly scrutinised investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server. The investigation and leak of Ms Clinton’s personal emails in October 2016 is thought to have contributed to her defeat to Mr Trump.
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