Barr claims Trump-Russia investigation was FBI attempt to 'sabotage' the president

William Barr has said without evidence that he believes the Russia investigation that shadowed Donald Trump for the first two years of his administration was started without any basis and amounted to an effort to “sabotage the presidency”, he said in an interview with Fox News Channel that aired on Thursday.

The attorney general offered no support for his assertion that the FBI lacked a basis for opening the investigation and made no mention of the fact that the bureau began its investigation after a Trump campaign adviser purported to have early knowledge that Russia had dirt on his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

Barr, who has appointed a US attorney to scrutinize the origins of the Russia investigation, said the justice department has evidence there was “something far more troubling” than just mistakes during the investigation that was eventually taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“I think the president has every right to be frustrated, because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history,” Barr said in the interview with Fox News Channel’s Laura Ingraham.

The attorney general asserted that the FBI launched its counterintelligence investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia “without any basis”.

“Even more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president,” Barr said. “To sabotage the presidency, and I think that – or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

The justice department’s inspector general found in a December report that the FBI was justified in opening the investigation to protect against a potential national security threat. It did not find any evidence that the decision to start the investigation was motivated by political bias.