President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani clashed with his boss over the weekend on the interpretation of the results of a Justice Department inspector general report released last week.
“Well I don’t think it exonerates him,” Giuliani told ABC News. “In some respects, it dramatically supports his position … that the people who conducted the Hillary probe who were extreme partisan for Hillary and against Trump.”
In his remarks to reporters on Friday, Trump claimed that the IG report on the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation not only “totally exonerates” him, it also “totally discredits” special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Over the weekend, he tweeted that Comey and “his minions” in the FBI started the “disgraceful Witch Hunt,” his favored monicker for the Russia probe.
The IG Report totally destroys James Comey and all of his minions including the great lovers, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who started the disgraceful Witch Hunt against so many innocent people. It will go down as a dark and dangerous period in American History!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2018
The IG report found that while former FBI Director James Comey may have not followed FBI norms in the way he handled the Clinton probe, he was not politically motivated.
But Trump has seized on the report as fodder for his decision to fire Comey last May. Part of Mueller’s investigation in looking into Trump’s handling of the Comey firing and whether he meant to obstruct justice in doing so.
