NATION
Saturday, December 16, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 9A
Trump assails FBI leadership, touts loyalty to police
By JONATHAN LEMIRE
and ZEKE MILLER
Associated Press
QUANTICO, Va. —
Taking aim at the credibility
of the FBI, President Donald
Trump unleashed a blistering
attack on the bureau’s lead-
ership even as he praised
state and local police officers
as a bulwark against rising
violence and crime.
Trump denounced the
bureau for its handling of the
Hillary Clinton email inves-
tigation, calling it “really
disgraceful” and continuing
his questioning of his coun-
try’s intelligence and law
enforcement institutions as
no president before.
“It’s a shame what’s
happened with the FBI,” the
president said. “We’re going
to rebuild the FBI, it’ll be
bigger and better than ever,
but it is very sad when you
look at those documents,
and how they’ve done that is
really, really disgraceful, and
you have a lot of very angry
people that are seeing it.”
The president’s broadside
appeared to reflect his anger
over revelations that senior
FBI officials exchanged
anti-Trump and pro-Hillary
Clinton text messages while
working on last year’s
Clinton probe and during
special counsel Robert
Mueller’s investigation into
whether Trump associates
colluded with Russian offi-
cials in the 2016 election.
Trump laced into the
bureau as he was departing
for its training academy in
Virginia, where he lavished
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions listen to FBI Director
Christopher Wray speak Friday at the FBI National Academy graduation ceremony, Friday in Quantico, Va.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein speaks Wednesday before a House Committee on the Judiciary
oversight hearing. Parts of a letter written by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., to FBI director Christopher Wray.
praise on graduates of a
weeks-long FBI National
Academy program for law
enforcement leaders from
around the country.
He praised the graduates,
who were trained on FBI
standards, touting their
accomplishments
and
pledging his unwavering
support. Trump told law
enforcement leaders he is
“more loyal than anyone else
could be” to police.
“Anti-police sentiment is
wrong and it’s dangerous,”
he added. “Anyone who kills
a police officer should get
the death penalty.”
Trump depicted a nation
besieged by violence, using
dark rhetoric that was a stark
departure from the language of
his predecessors. He evoked
this week’s attempted terror
attack in New York when he
called for stricter immigration
policies. He also delivered a
stern warning to members of
the international gang MS-13
that his administration will
root them out and arrest them.
Trump celebrated his
decision to make it easier
for local police forces to
purchase surplus military
equipment, and questioned
rising violence in Chicago.
“What the hell is going
on in Chicago? What the hell
is happening there?” asked
Trump returning to a favorite
campaign target.
The law enforcement
crowd often chuckled and
applauded its approval.
Trump has often appeared at
ease in front of police groups
and loves to suggest that
they supported him in last
year’s campaign.
Violent
crime
has
increased nationally the last
two years but has dropped
precipitously over the last
quarter century. Gun violence
in Chicago has dropped in
2017 from 2016 and as of
Dec. 10 there had been 620
homicides compared to 730
at the same time last year.
Attorney General Jeff
Sessions, who has faced
Trump’s wrath after recusing
himself from the Russia
probe, distanced himself
from Trump’s criticism of
the bureau, saying he does
not share a view that the FBI
“is not functioning at a high
level all over the country.”
He praised the bureau’s
crime-fighting efforts and
stopped short of saying he
agreed with Trump’s assess-
ment that the reputation of
the agency is “in tatters.”
Hours before Trump’s
speech, White House Deputy
press secretary Hogan Gidley
told Fox News Channel that
edits to former FBI Director
James Comey’s statement
on Clinton’s private email
server and anti-Trump texts
from a top agent are “deeply
troubling.”
“There is extreme bias
against this president with
high-up members of the
team there at the FBI who
were investigating Hillary
Clinton at the time,” Gidley
charged, as Mueller pushes
on with a probe of possible
Trump campaign ties to
Russia. Gidley says Trump
maintains confidence in the
FBI’s rank-and-file.
Edits to the Comey draft
appeared to soften the gravity
of the bureau’s finding in its
2016 investigation of Hillary
Clinton’s use of a private email
server while secretary of state.
Gidley said the disclosure
of politically charged text
messages sent by one of
the agents on the Clinton
case, Peter Strzok, were
“eye-opening.”
Strzok, who was in the room
as Clinton was interviewed,
was later assigned to special
counsel Robert Mueller’s
team to investigate potential
coordination between Russia
and the Trump campaign.
He was re-assigned after the
messages were uncovered this
summer.
With the attack, the
White House joined a
growing movement among
the conservative media
and some Republicans to
question the integrity of
Mueller’s investigation.
About 200 leaders in law
enforcement from around
the country attended the
weeks-long FBI National
Academy program at Quan-
tico aimed at raising law
enforcement standards and
cooperation.
Coursework
included
intelligence theory, terrorism
and terrorist mindsets, law,
behavioral science, law
enforcement
communica-
tion, and forensic science.
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