Donald Trump may have counted his Faberge eggs before they hatched.
Donald Trump told Russian diplomats he was feeling better after firing the « nutjob » investigating him for campaign ties to the Kremlin, according to a report.
The President told Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak that pressure had been “taken off” because he fired FBI Director James Comey, the New York Times reported Friday.
“I just fired the head of the F. B. I. He was crazy, a real nutjob, ” the newspaper reported, referring to a summary of the conversation.
American press were not allowed into the Oval Office meeting Trump held with Russia’s top diplomats last Wednesday, the day after the sudden firing of Comey shook Washington D. C.
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Far from relieving pressure, that firing, and Trump’s reported request that Comey stop an investigation in disgraced National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, ratcheted up calls for an independent investigation into the President’s potential links to Russia.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed earlier this week as special counsel to look into alleged Moscow meddling in the 2016 election, as well as potential collusion with Trump.
Trump and his team had originally denied that the Russia investigation had anything to do with Comey’s firing, saying it was based on his handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe.
The White House doubled down on Trump’s statements to Lavrov in the Times report, with Press Secretary Sean Spicer saying “By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia’s actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia.”
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“The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it. Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations. »
Spicer added that Trump has always emphasized the benefits of making deals with the U. S.’s former Cold War foe on crises such as the Syrian civil war, ISIS and eastern Ukraine.
The « nutjob » comment is not the first thing Trump said during his Lavrov meeting that has gained widespread attention.
He also divulged classified information about the fight against ISIS from an ally, later revealed to be Israel, that the U. S. had not shared with other close partners, according to a Washington Post report from earlier this week.
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National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster said that all of Trump’s information sharing at the meeting was appropriate and « nothing that you would not know from open-source reporting. »
