The White House won’t rule out prosecuting President Donald Trump’s adversaries.
During an interview on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Attorney General William Barr will decide whether former FBI director James Comey could face criminal charges from Trump’s Justice Department.
“We’re going to let the attorney general make that determination as he gets to the conclusion of this investigation,” said Sanders of the president’s decision to give Barr broad new powers to investigate the investigation of Trump’s campaign.
“We certainly expect the people that were responsible and that were part of this unprecedented obstruction and corruption at the FBI, those people should certainly be held responsible and be held accountable,” added Sanders. “And the president expects that to take place.”
The investigation that Trump wants to investigate is the legitimate probe into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election that passed into the hands of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Sanders would not say whether Trump would accept Barr’s findings if they exonerated the president’s opponents, claiming with no evidence that “we already know about some wrongdoing” regarding the probe of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump falsely accused Comey and several other former FBI employees of treason — which is punishable by death — during a bizarre news conference on Thursday.
Former national security officials have expressed concerns that the president’s move to let his attorney general declassify information about the Russia investigation could jeopardize U.S. intelligence sources and methods.
This article has been updated to clarify the wording of what Sanders said about Trump accepting or not accepting an exoneration from Barr.