Donald Trump was right to fire James Comey.
The attorney general said that various inspector general inquiries would help uncover any wrongdoing and that he wanted to avoid politicizing the work of career officials.
Democrats denounced the Trump administration’s seizure of lawmakers’ data as an abuse of power and called on Republicans to back the congressional inquiry.
Federal law enforcement shifted resources last year in response to Donald Trump’s insistence that the radical left endangered the country. Meanwhile, right-wing extremism was building ominously.
The inquiry was announced after revelations about a plot between Donald Trump and a top former department official to promote false claims of voter fraud by replacing the acting attorney general.
Top department officials were “a driving force” behind President Trump’s child separation policy, a draft investigation report said.
John O. Brennan is a witness, not a target, in the inquiry being led by John H. Durham, a U.S. attorney, but the C.I.A. under Barack Obama could be subject to further criticism by the Trump administration.
The former official admitted that he had intentionally inserted words into the text of the email, which discussed past relations between the C.I.A. and Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser.
Prosecutors are not expected to reveal any evidence of a broad anti-Trump conspiracy among law enforcement officials.
Footnotes were declassified from a watchdog report that found that the F.B.I. had reason to open the Russia inquiry but made errors in seeking approval to wiretap a former Trump adviser.
