FBI group defends agents amid Trump’s attacks

A group representing thousands of current and former FBI agents shared a defense of bureau employees on Saturday amid renewed criticism of the FBI from President Trump and others.

“As we have said, Attacks on our character and demeaning comments about the FBI will not deter Agents from continuing to do what we have always done—dedicate our lives to protecting the American people,” the FBI Agents Association tweeted Saturday morning.

As we have said, Attacks on our character and demeaning comments about the FBI will not deter Agents from continuing to do what we have always done—dedicate our lives to protecting the American people. https://t.co/HwOnBBkd20

— FBI Agents Assoc. (@FBIAgentsAssoc) September 22, 2018

The FBI agents group issued the tweet after Trump went after the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI at a campaign rally in Missouri on Friday evening, vowing to get rid of the “stench” at the department.

{mosads}“Look what’s being exposed at the Department of Justice and the FBI. You have some real bad ones. You see what’s happening at the FBI — they’re all gone, they’re all gone,” he said.

“But there’s a lingering stench and we’re going to get rid of that too,” Trump added.

Trump made the comments after a bombshell New York Times report said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein proposed secretly taping conversations with Trump and discussed the possibility of the Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. 

Rosenstein denied the report, saying in a statement, “I never pursued or authorized recording the President and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false.”

Other media outlets reported Friday that Rosenstein had made comments about wearing a wire in the Oval Office, though unnamed sources said Rosenstein made the remarks sarcastically.

The allegations are said to have been laid out in contemporaneous memos written by then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the Justice Department earlier this year amid an internal leak probe. 

Trump has had a tense relationship with Rosenstein and the DOJ, particularly surrounding special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and obstruction of justice.

The president has slammed the probe as a “witch hunt” and various reports have said that Trump has wished to end the investigation on multiple occasions.