President Donald Trump ripped top prosecutors and FBI officials like James Comey on Tuesday for spying on his campaign and prosecuting campaign operative Roger Stone and his former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn.
“Now we found out that they are a bunch of dirty cops and paid for by the DNC and paid for by Hillary Clinton in many cases,” Trump said.
Stone was convicted of making false statements to Congress, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering, and Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI. Both men were swept up in the Russia investigation pursued by the FBI and the Justice Department and have yet to be sentenced.
The president referred to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil his campaign advisors using the phony dossier created for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS.
“These were dirty people. These were bad people. These were evil people,” Trump said, predicting that removing them from office would be one of his “greatest achievements” as president of the United States.
“We have no place in our country for people like that,” he added.
Trump spoke to reporters after conducting a videoconference call with members of the United States military on Christmas Eve.
Trump was asked by reporters about whether he would pardon political operative Roger Stone, an early informal advisor to Trump prior to his presidential campaign.
“I hadn’t thought of it,” Trump said, but said that Stone’s prosecution was unfair but repeated that he was not part of his campaign.
“I’ve known Roger over the years. He’s a nice guy. A lot of people like him,” Trump said. “He got hit very hard, as did Gen. Flynn and as did a lot of other people.”
Trump referred to the entire investigation as a massive hoax and said what happened to Flynn and Stone was “very unfair.”