Trump: ‘I’m so angry at Republicans’
President Donald Trump said Monday he was furious with Republicans in Washington for not doing enough to take up his unsubstantiated claims about former Obama administration officials and Hunter Biden.
“Does anything happen? Nothing happens,” Trump said at an event in Dayton, Ohio. “I’m so angry at Republicans. I am. I’m so angry. I am so angry, but a lot of things are happening.”
For months, Trump has tried to spur sweeping investigations into former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden over unproven allegations about FBI surveillance of Trump campaign associates that the president has dubbed “Obamagate.”
Those calls had gone largely unheeded by Republicans who control the Senate until recently, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to authorize more than three dozen subpoenas and depositions to compel testimony from former FBI Director James Comey and others.
Trump lashed out at Comey, a frequent target, accusing him and “all the sleazebags” of “treason.”
“They spied on my campaign, and we caught ’em,” Trump said in Dayton during an event billed as being about jobs and fighting for American workers. “Let‘s now see what happens.”
The president claimed that he is “trying like hell to stay out of” investigating his political enemies ahead of a highly contentious election. Emotions are likely to be ratcheted up further in the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death Friday. Republican operatives have credited a high court vacancy with partially fueling Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t have to actually, but it’s better if I do, I think,” Trump said of investigations. “I’m trying to stay out of it, but it’s a disgrace that it’s taken this long.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has teased a forthcoming report that he says will detail allegations against the Bidens, with a focus on Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company, which is to be released sometime this month.
Democrats have decried the Senate committee’s investigations as a fishing expedition intended to damage Biden’s presidential bid, and said Johnson’s probe echoes false claims seeded by a Russian disinformation project — a charge the Wisconsin Republican has rejected as a “coordinated smear.” Johnson has acknowledged that the examination of Obama-era intelligence efforts would benefit Trump’s reelection effort.
Trump also expressed sympathy for what “bad people” did to Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser. In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Flynn later moved to withdraw his plea, alleging that it was coerced. The Justice Department in May took steps to drop its prosecution of Flynn after the release of FBI records detailing the origins of the criminal case against the retired lieutenant general that the department has argued in court documents lacked proper investigative grounding. Federal District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan is weighing whether to accept DOJ’s move or sustain the guilty plea.
“What they’ve done to Gen. Flynn and others is a disgrace,” Trump said.
Trump has provided no evidence to support his claims, and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified before lawmakers in August denying any impropriety in the FBI’s investigation of Flynn .
