Trump Tweets Lengthy Attack on F.B.I. Over Inquiry Into Possible Aid to Russia – The New York Times

Mr. Trump’s comments echoed those that his White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, released on Friday night.

“This is absurd. James Comey was fired because he’s a disgraced partisan hack, and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, who was in charge at the time, is a known liar fired by the F.B.I.,” Ms. Sanders said. “Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia.”

Parts of the statements by Mr. Trump and Ms. Sanders are at odds with the public record and with the findings of the inspector general’s report. While Democrats were furious with Mr. Comey over his public statements about the Clinton email server case — at a news conference and in a pair of letters in the middle of the campaign — they were deeply alarmed by his removal, given his role in the Russia investigation.

In his report, the inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, pointedly criticized Mr. Comey for breaking with longstanding policy to publicly discuss the Clinton case, and he castigated “insubordinate” senior officials who worked with Mr. Comey for privately criticizing Mr. Trump even as they investigated him. But he ultimately said he had found no evidence to believe that the decisions not to charge Mrs. Clinton for her use of a private email server in handling classified information “were affected by bias or other improper considerations.”

“Rather, we concluded that they were based on the prosecutor’s assessment of facts, the law and past department practice,” he wrote.