President Donald Trump attacked the probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia as a “political hit job” on Monday, as a part of a mounting White House effort to paint the probe as politically motivated.
In the latest salvo from Trump’s administration and his Republican party, the president assailed former CIA chief John Brennan, a strident critic, as having initiated the investigation.
A day earlier Trump demanded the Justice Department investigate the FBI for allegedly planting an informant in his campaign, and his lawyer pressed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to speed up the probe to avoid it affecting November’s congressional elections.
Both moves highlighted the heightened political stakes surrounding the year-old probe, as Mueller seeks to interview Trump himself, and as talk increases of an impeachment effort against the president if the investigation finds evidence of collusion and obstruction of justice.
“This was a Political hit job, this was not an Intelligence Investigation,” Trump said in a series of tweets, quoting Fox News commentator Dan Bongino.
Brennan, the CIA’s head from 2013 to 2017, “started this entire debacle about President Trump,” he said. “He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community.”
