James Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), defends the bureau, saying it did not target Republicans during the Trump administration.
During an interview on Wednesday’s “CNN This Morning,” Comey told host Poppy Harlow that the FBI did nothing wrong and is not going after anyone.
“It’s really unfortunate the notion that the FBI is some sort of leftist cabal out to get the Republicans. It’s so crazy it just shows you how crazy our times are,” he said.
Harlow then asked about a chart showing how Republican trust in the FBI has halved in the last decade and asked, “What can be done to correct that? And what if it doesn’t change? What happens?”
“It will change.” the ex-FBI director responded. “The FBI will be fine in the long run. This fever around Donald Trump and the MAGA world will eventually break, but it’s become somehow a nutty article of faith that the FBI is out to get Republicans.”
“If you’d asked people twenty years ago whether that would be the accusation, they’d say, ‘That’s nuts.’ It’s nuts, but it will pass,” he added.
This comes after Special Counsel John Durham released his 306-page report last month, outlining his investigation into former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s “Russia Collusion” allegations against former President Donald Trump.
“[Durham’s] conclusion was the FBI should’ve never launched a full probe of Trump and Russia. And he said that the FBI used raw unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence – an essentially different standard than they used with Hillary Clinton,” Harlow summarized the report.
The report added that CIA Director Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden on Clinton’s plan to link Trump’s campaign to Russia. Brennan also continued to push the claim of collusion on liberal media for years.
In response to the report, Comey said that he doesn’t have any regrets about how he and his team handled that investigation when he was in charge of the bureau.
“No and there’s nothing new in his report about the FBI. He thinks it ought’ve been a prelim investigation and not a full, and the differences would be boring to your listeners and your viewers,” Comey said.
