President Trump says he’s ‘totally exonerated’ by Justice report, and that FBI was ‘plotting against my election’

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President Donald Trump said that he had been “totally exonerated” by a new Justice Department report that is highly critical of several key FBI figures in the Hillary Clinton email probe, including former FBI Director James Comey. The report by the department’s inspector general offered no findings regarding the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s campaign in the 2016 election. But the president seemed to suggest that he had been cleared because of the criticism in the report directed at top FBI officials — whom he referred to as “scum” — who had expressed animus toward him or otherwise used poor judgment during the investigation of Clinton. Several of those officials have also played key roles in the Russia investigation. “Take a look at the investigation. Take a look at how it started,” President Trump said. “The top people were horrible . . . . They were plotting against my election.” He argued that the Mueller investigation “has been totally discredited,” and singled out Comey, whom he fired, for additional scorn. “I think Comey was the ring leader of this whole den of thieves,” the president said. “It was a den of thieves.”


President Trump says he’s ‘totally exonerated’ by Justice report, and that FBI was ‘plotting against my election’