FBI Director Announces Bureau Probing Russia Ties to Trump Campaign

Comey Says Putin Wanted trump to Win

FBI Director James Comey today confirmed that the FBI is engaged in an ongoing investigation of possible ties between the Russian government and President Trump’s election campaign, related to allegations Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election.

Comey, in protracted testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, insisted it was a “fairly easy judgement” for the intelligence community to decide that Russian President Vladimir Putin “hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.”

Comey’s comments once again raise questions about how much of the intelligence community’s narrative on Russia is simply a function of them starting with the assumption that Putin hated Clinton and just accepted all the allegations because they fit into that narrative.

The White House insisted they were unaware of any current administration officials being a subject of the ongoing investigation, and issued an emailed statement to media outlets claiming that not only was there “no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion,” but also that “there is no evidence of a Trump-Russia scandal.”

President Trump went on to insist that the entire Russian story is “fake news,” adding that the whole thing was made up by the Democrats “as an excuse for running a terrible campaign” and losing in 2016. This has been a recurring claim from the president.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.