President Trump Tuesday said he had not ordered Attorney General William Barr to launch an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, but that he is proud of Barr for doing it.
“It was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the people of and you know what? I am so proud of our attorney general that he is looking into it,” he said as he left the White House for an event in Louisiana.
“I think it’s great. I did not know about it.”
Trump has repeatedly demanded a Justice Department review of how and why the FBI began its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A day earlier, it emerged that Barr had appointed a U.S. attorney to look into the investigation’s origins and to examine whether its methods of gathering information on the Trump campaign were lawful.
The New York Times reported that Barr’s decision to appoint John Durham, U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, was the third inquiry into whether federal investigators erred in obtaining a surveillance warrant to Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.
Barr has previously raised concerns about the way the investigation unfolded.
“I think spying did occur,” he told a U.S. Senate appropriations panel last month before explaining that he could not be sure whether rules were broken only that the matter needed to be explored further.
Democrats accuse Trump of using the questions to undermine the findings of the Mueller report, which found that Russia tried to swing the election in his favor and which also left open the possibility that the president tried to obstruct justice.
