US President Donald Trump has launched a fresh Twitter attack on the credibility of his own FBI.
He was responding to disclosures that an FBI agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian election meddling because of anti-Trump text messages.
Mr Trump, two days after his former national security adviser Michael Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI, again denied that he directed FBI director James Comey to stop investigating Mr Flynn.
The President offered a running Twitter commentary yesterday amid renewed focus on Mr Mueller’s probe and Mr Flynn’s decision to co-operate with the investigation as part of his plea agreement. Democrats said the developments suggested growing evidence of co-ordination between Mr Trump’s circle and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
California senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel was beginning to see “the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice” against Mr Trump.
She said: “I think we see this in indictments... and some of the comments that are being made. I see this in the hyperfrenetic attitude of the White House, the comments every day, the continual tweets.
“And I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That’s obstruction of justice.”
In a series of tweets, Mr Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Mr Comey, who Trump fired in May, the FBI’s reputation is “in Tatters – worst in History!”
He vowed to “bring it back to greatness”.The President also retweeted a post saying new FBI director Chris Wray “needs to clean house”. The President seized on reports a veteran FBI counter-intelligence agent was removed from Mr Mueller’s team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages viewed as potentially anti-Trump.
The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mr Mueller, said Mr Mueller removed Peter Strzok from the team “immediately upon learning of the allegations”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article