Trump mocks latest revelations about FBI counterintelligence probe

President Donald Trump denied Monday that he was ever a foreign agent of Russia as he turned his first on the FBI after its bosses were revealed to have ordered a probe of whether he was working for Putin after he fired James Comey.

Trump has been asked the question during a phone interview on Fox News on Saturday night and did not deny the claim directly.

But Monday, as a backlash mounted, he denied the claim that appeared in the New York Times as part of an article revealing an FBI counterintelligence investigation into the allegation.

‘I never worked for Russia, and you know that answer better than anybody,’ he told a reporter as he left a snowy White House for Louisiana. ‘Not only did never work for Russia, I think it’s a disgrace that you even asked that question, because it’s a whole big fat hoax.’

Instead he unleashed on the FBI.  Trump called FBI bosses including ex-acting director Andrew McCabe and the FBI lovers Lisa Page and Peter Strzok ‘known scoundrels,’ and said that was why they launched a probe into his relationship with Russia after ‘Crooked Hillary’ failed in her bid for the presidency.

He claimed in a new attack on Comey that he too was a ‘bad cop’ and a ‘dirty cop’ and he did the country a favor when he fired him. 

‘What happened with the FBI, I have done a great service for the country when I fired James Comey. He was a bad cop and he was a dirty cop and he lied, he really lied,’ he said. 

President Donald Trump denied Monday that he was ever a foreign agent of Russia

Fury: Trump voiced rage at the FBI calling its leadership after he fired James Comey 'dirty cops' and 'bad cops' as well as calling Comey a 'dirty cop'

Fury: Trump voiced rage at the FBI calling its leadership after he fired James Comey ‘dirty cops’ and ‘bad cops’ as well as calling Comey a ‘dirty cop’

Attack: Trump vented about the FBI as he left the White House to fly to New Orleans to address the Farm Bureau conference

Attack: Trump vented about the FBI as he left the White House to fly to New Orleans to address the Farm Bureau conference

Chilly mood: Trump set off on Marine One from a frozen White House lawn after Washington D.C. was blanketed in snow

Chilly mood: Trump set off on Marine One from a frozen White House lawn after Washington D.C. was blanketed in snow

Trump claimed in a new charge against James Comey that he too was a 'bad cop' and a 'dirty cop' and he did the country a favor when he fired him

Trump claimed in a new charge against James Comey that he too was a ‘bad cop’ and a ‘dirty cop’ and he did the country a favor when he fired him

‘Either he’s a bad liar or he’s grossly incompetent,’ the president said of Comey’s recent testimony to Congress about the Hillary Clinton email investigation. 

Trump accused all those involved in ordering the inquiry into whether he was a Putin agent after he fired Comey of being corrupt. 

‘The people doing that investigation were people that have been caught that are known scoundrels there,’ he said.

Among them he name the FBI lovers Strzok and Page. ‘I guess you could say they’re dirty cops,’ he claimed as he lit into favorite targets . 

The president said the former agents’ conduct was ‘so unfair’ to the bureau’s rank and file.  

And he suggested that ‘more’ FBI heads could roll after McCabe, Strzok and Page quit or were fired by new FBI director Christopher Wray. 

Trump repeatedly dodged demands that he respond to a second report on his relationship with Russia in the Washington Post, proclaiming that he had nothing to hide even as he refused to release the transcripts of his conversations with Vladimir Putin.

Trump claimed on Fox on Saturday that ‘anybody could have listened’ to his infamous closed-door conversation with Putin over the summer in Helskini and the ‘meeting is up for grabs’ but said Monday that he didn’t think it would be appropriate.

‘I just don’t know anything about it. I read it this morning. It’s a lot of fake news. That was a very good meeting. It was actually a very successful meeting and I have those meetings with everything. I just know nothing about it,’ he claimed. ‘It was a very, very successful meeting. We talked about Israel, we talked about the pipeline that Germany is paying Russia a lot of money — I don’t think it’s appropriate.’ 

The Washington Post claimed in a Sunday article that he took his interpreter’s notes after a 2017 conversation with Putin in Hamburg and has kept his senior staff from seeing transcripts or highlights of that and other conversations with the Russian leader. 

A senior official told the Post that no record exists of any of Trump’s five face-to-face conversations with Putin since he took office. 

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee threatened Sunday to subpoena the interpreter’s notes from the president’s June summit with Putin in Finland. 

‘Last year, we sought to obtain the interpreter’s notes or testimony, from the private meeting between Trump and Putin. The Republicans on our committee voted us down. Will they join us now? Shouldn’t we find out whether our president is really putting “America first?” asked Democrat Adam Schiff. 

Trump Monday morning mocked reports that the FBI opened a counterintelligence probe of his activities following his firing of Comey, needling critics who ‘thought he worked for the Kremlin’ in a tweet that made light of the allegations against him.

The president noted a drop in gas prices, which is harmful to oil-exporting Russia – although market-driven global oil prices are thought to be far beyond control of any single official including the president.        

‘Gas prices drop across the United States because President Trump has deregulated Energy and we are now producing a great deal more oil than ever before,’ Trump wrote on Twitter Monday morning.  

‘But this is bad news for Russia, why would President Trump do such a thing? Thought he worked for Kremlin?’ Trump asked. 

Trump’s tweet followed yet another revelation about Russia, after CNN reported on transcripts of congressional testimony of top FBI officials.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker spoke about the debate as officials contemplated opening an investigation of Trump – with possibilities including his innocence as well as him being directed by Moscow.

Officials wanted to know if Trump was ‘acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing their will,’ Baker said.

Trump continued responding to a bombshell story in The New York Times on Friday stating that the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump (seen left with Russian President Vladimir Putin) was acting as a Kremlin agent

Trump continued responding to a bombshell story in The New York Times on Friday stating that the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump (seen left with Russian President Vladimir Putin) was acting as a Kremlin agent

Targeted: Lisa Page, the FBI attorney, and Peter Strozk, the FBI agent whose affair included exchanging anti-Trump texts, were targeted by Trump again Monday

Targeted: Lisa Page, the FBI attorney, and Peter Strozk, the FBI agent whose affair included exchanging anti-Trump texts, were targeted by Trump again Monday

Targeted: Lisa Page, the FBI attorney, and Peter Strozk, the FBI agent whose affair included exchanging anti-Trump texts, were targeted by Trump again Monday 

Trump called in to Justice with Jeanine Pirro on Saturday night to deny that he is a secret agent of Russia, following a New York Times report that the FBI had investigated the possibility

Trump called in to Justice with Jeanine Pirro on Saturday night to deny that he is a secret agent of Russia, following a New York Times report that the FBI had investigated the possibility

‘That was one extreme. The other extreme is that the President is completely innocent, and we discussed that too,’ Baker told the House Intelligence Committee.

‘There’s a range of things this could possibly be. We need to investigate, because we don’t know whether, you know, the worst-case scenario is possibly true or the President is totally innocent and we need to get this thing over with — and so he can move forward with his agenda,’ he added. 

Trump blasted the FBI and Comey this weekend after the New York Times reported the FBI opened a counterintelligence in the days after the Comey firing.

‘Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!’ Trump tweeted.  

The transcripts also include former FBI lawyer Lisa Page commenting on the days after the comey firing, including a text from fellow FBI official and lover Peter Strzok that: ‘We need to open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy is acting’ – in reference to then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

“It’s not that it could not have been done,” Page testified. “This case had been a topic of discussion for some time. The ‘waiting on’ was an indecision and a cautiousness on the part of the bureau with respect to what to do and whether there was sufficient predication to open,’ she said. 

Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN on Sunday that whether Trump was a witting or unwitting agent of Russia is ‘the defining question’ of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Warner was asked about the bombshell story in The New York Times on Friday stating that the FBI began a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was acting as a Russian agent after the President fired FBI Director James Comey.

Comey at the time was leading an investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

The Times reported the counterintelligence probe was sparked in part by growing alarm about Trump’s behavior, including comments he made suggesting he fired Comey over the Russia investigation, which is now being led by Mueller.

When Warner was asked whether he thinks Trump acted wittingly or unwittingly as a Russian agent, he cited a report alleging that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, shared internal polling data with a Russian businessman believed to be connected to Russian intelligence.

‘Why would you turn over that information? And what’s curious is it would be that kind of information that would inform the Russians later in the campaign when they launched their social media efforts where they created these fake identities,’ Warner said.

Warner said there was ‘clear-cut proof’ that Russian efforts were aimed at dissuading African-Americans from voting.

Trump’s continued pushback comes days after he engaged in a a friendly television interview with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on Saturday, where he bristled when asked if he had ever worked for Russia but never flat-out denied it.

Pirro asked: ‘Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?’

‘I think it’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever been asked,’ Trump replied. ‘I think it’s the most insulting article I’ve ever had written.’

‘It was a great insult, and the New York Times is a disaster as a paper,’ Trump said. 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk