White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused the FBI of alleged corruption to harm president Donald Trump, in an interview with NBC News in Tokyo during a state visit to Japan.
“We already know that there was a scandalous amount of corruption in the FBI, they leaked information, they lied, they were working specifically to try to topple the president, to try to harm the president,” Sanders told the news channel from Japan, where she accompanies Trump.
Three days ago, president Trump ordered the US intelligence agencies to collaborate with the attorney general, William Barr, in the investigation into an alleged espionage campaign for the 2016 elections.
President Trump has insisted that his campaign team suffered espionage before the elections by the intelligence under the orders of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
In that sense, he has repeatedly requested a second investigation into those elections, parallel to the one led by the special prosecutor Robert Mueller, which Trump considered a “political persecution” and a “witch hunt”, as he was investigated for possible links between his electoral team and Russia to influence the 2016 vote.
Sanders said on Sunday that they will let Barr reach the end: “The Americans deserve the truth, the president has asked for that and we do not expect less.”
For that reason, she added, Trump has granted the attorney general authority to declassify information and check the necessary documents to find out what happened.
“We already know that there was some crime,” Sanders said, “the president is not wrong about that, but he (Trump) wants to know everything that happened and to what extent.”
White House Press Secretary reiterated that before “the unprecedented obstruction and corruption in the FBI, there are people who should be held responsible and must be accountable.”
Last month, Barr told a congressional committee that there was espionage against members of the Trump campaign at the origin of the investigations of the so-called Russian plot, led by Mueller, although later he said that he is really trying to find out if there was indeed “illegal surveillance”to members of the electoral team of the then-candidate.
Mueller closed his investigation into the Russian plot in March and concluded that he found no evidence that Trump or anyone close to him colluded with the Kremlin to win the election.
