Vice President Mike Pence said Friday he takes it personally that political opponents of President Trump might have spied on the Trump campaign and his presidential transition team.
“At a time when we were beginning the process of organizing our government, nine days after the election, these two disgraced FBI agents were corresponding about sending a counterintelligence guy … to my intelligence briefing,” Pence complained during an interview with Fox News. “I have to tell you, it is very offensive to me.”
The two FBI officials Pence is referring to are former Director James Comey and acting Director Andrew McCabe. Both men have been vocal critics of Trump since leaving the department and have been accused by the administration of kicking off what they say was an illegitimate investigation into the campaign’s contacts with foreign governments.
After Trump fired Comey, special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Mueller found no such collusion occurred.
[Related: Trump: Comey ‘probably was one of the people leading the effort on spying’]
.@VP says it offends him that people spied on @realDonaldTrump‘s 2016 campaign and transition team.
“The American people aren’t going to tolerate this … they have a right to know how this all started. If the law was violated, those people need to be held accountable.” pic.twitter.com/wnCBMiYJEk
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 3, 2019
Since the findings of Mueller’s report were made public earlier this month, Republicans on Capitol Hill have shifted public scrutiny to what they claim to be an anti-Trump bias in the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice.
Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, have led this charge, railing against a so-called deep state looking to undermine Trump.
The investigators, they say, need to be investigated.
The Republican argument was given extra fuel last week when Attorney General William Barr, who oversaw issuing Mueller’s report in redacted form, said he believed there is evidence to prove illegal spying on the Trump campaign was carried out by former Obama administration intelligence officials.
Pence and others in the administration have been emboldened by that assertion from the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official.
“The American people aren’t going to tolerate this,” Pence said. “They have a right to know how this all started. If the law was violated, those people need to be held accountable.”
