President Trump Uses Quantico Visit To Renew His Enmity Against The FBI
President Donald Trump has shown that he is not a fan of the FBI. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump dismissed former FBI director James Comey, who claims that he was fired after refusing to “back off” his investigation into Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn. As reported by the Inquisitr yesterday, President Trump has accused the FBI of mounting a politically motivated witch hunt against him. Against that background, President Trump’s visit to FBI headquarters at Quantico yesterday was always going to be interesting.
As reported by MSNBC, Trump used the visit to renew his feud with the FBI. Trump told reporters that the FBI was “sad” and “disgraceful” but that he would rebuild it. Trump went on to say that people are “very angry” with “what’s gone on with the FBI and with the Justice Department.”
On arrival at Quantico, Trump gave a speech to a graduating class of law enforcement officers from other agencies. According to Newsweek, President Trump took the opportunity to claim that 10 percent of law enforcement officials are not “great people.”
ABC News suggests that President Trump has a clear goal in mind when he criticizes the FBI and the Department of Justice. They argue that by “publicly deriding the FBI’s reputation,” Trump hopes to undermine confidence in its investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia to affect the outcome of last year’s presidential election.
Trump’s claims that “the president of the United States has your back” will have rung hollow to FBI agents after his frequent criticism of the Bureau. As recently reported by Business Insider, feelings inside the FBI are running high, with agents furious about the insults Trump fires their way. Frank Montoya, Jr., a former FBI special agent who served as the Director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, claimed that Trump fails to condemn Russia but insults the FBI at every opportunity.
“There is a lot of anger in the FBI [and] the entire intelligence community, for that matter, over how this president will say nary a negative word about the Russians but will insult us every chance he gets.”
The MSNBC report concludes that FBI officials “shouldn’t hold their breath” while waiting for support from Donald Trump. It is fascinating to hear a president who claims to be “tough on crime” denigrating the very people responsible for the fight against crime. A cynic might believe that President Donald Trump has good reason to undermine the FBI and Department of Justice, that reason comes in the shape of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
