President Donald Trump believes his efforts to purge the FBI of biased top officials is part of his presidential legacy, he said in an interview published on Wednesday.
“I think that I hope to be able to put this up as one of my crowning achievements,” he told The Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and John Solomon, describing his efforts as “a great service to the country.”
Trump noted support from the American people for casting doubt on some of the top FBI officials involved with the surveillance and subsequent investigation of his campaign, which he argued was politically motivated.
“We have tremendous support by the way, to expose something that is truly a cancer in our country,” he said.
After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the administration forced out Deputy Director Andrew McCable, FBI agent Peter Strzok, and downgraded Department of Justice employee Bruce Ohr. More than 25 FBI and DOJ officials have either been fired, demoted, or resigned since Trump took office.
The president also wondered why the FBI failed to warn him that one of his low-level advisors might have been compromised by the Russians.
“If they thought there was something with Russia … they should have come to me,” Trump said, asserting that he would have removed that person from his campaign.
He was frustrated that reporters in the news media failed to examine key details of the story.
“Even the other side knows how wrong this whole thing is. They just can’t write it,” he said. “At some point I really believe they will. You know there’s Pulitzer Prizes here. Big ones.”