Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) took a swipe at the FBI on Tuesday, accusing agency officials of acting like “political operators” after they released an unflattering Hillary Clinton report right before the three-day holiday weekend.
“It’s like the most buried time you could put out stories. I’m surprised. I mean, I can’t believe they would do what is such a patently political move. It makes them look like political operators versus law enforcement officers,” Ryan said in a radio interview with WRJN in Wisconsin.
{mosads}“The fact that they chose the Friday before Labor Day to put all this out there mystifies me as to why they thought that was a smart thing to do,” he said.
The new FBI report focused on its investigation into the Democratic presidential nominee’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, a practice that raised questions about whether she had mishandled classified information. The 58-page document included a summary of the agency’s three-hour interview with Clinton, though sections of the report were redacted.
Earlier this summer, FBI Director James Comey angered Republicans by announcing he would not recommend charging Clinton with willfully mishandling classified information.
In the radio interview, Ryan called Comey “a credible guy who has a credible background,” but added that he disagreed with his recommendation not to charge Clinton.
Clinton, Ryan said, is “the last person I want to see become president.”
“I think she has real trust issues, real credibility issues,” Ryan continued.
“What she said she did with respect to her emails, her devices and all the rest versus now the facts as we know them as released in the Friday data dump,” he said.
“This is not the kind of person, I think, we want to entrust the White House with.”