2020-10-08 at 2:33 PM UTC
The Hill
Trump swipes at Barr, Pompeo, Wray in return to Russia investigation, Clinton emails
Brett Samuels
President Trump on Thursday swiped at two of his most loyal Cabinet members and his FBI director in a phone interview with Fox Business as he worked himself into a rage over the Russia investigation and the 2016 election.
The president complained at length about the lack of consequences for Hillary Clinton and other members of the Obama administration for the former's use of a private email server and the latter's involvement in launching an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump's call with Maria Bartiromo on marked his first interview since revealing he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Trump turned his frustration toward Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr, lamenting that they had not done enough to speed the process of implicating his political opponents.
"To be honest, Bill Barr is going to go down as either the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he's going to go down as, you know, a very sad situation," Trump said. "I'll be honest with you. He's got all the information he needs. They want to get more, more, more. They keep getting more. I said, 'you don't need any more.' "
Trump also chastised Pompeo, who has been in the administration since the beginning and is one of the president's most ardent supporters, for not working to find and release Clinton's deleted emails, a subject of fascination for the president and his supporters throughout his first term.
"They're in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out, which is very sad, actually," Trump said. "I'm not happy about him for that reason. He was unable to get them out. I don't know why. You're running the State Department, you get them out."
The FBI concluded in 2016 that Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified information while serving as secretary of State, but did not find wrongdoing.
The president on Thursday also took aim at the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, who has come under scrutiny from Trump allies for what they believe is slow-walking efforts to find wrongdoing in the Obama administration.
"He's been disappointing," Trump said of Wray, though he would not say whether he planned to replace him if reelected.
Trump has in recent weeks repeatedly criticized Wray for the director's comments that he has not seen evidence of widespread voter fraud and his assertion that antifa is an ideology more than a movement. Trump has spread inaccurate claims about the safety of mail-in ballots, and he has repeatedly blamed antifa for unrest in U.S. cities.
