Trump Accuses Justice Dept, FBI of Pro-Democrat Bias

US President Donald Trump publicly attacked the FBI’s leadership on Friday, accusing them of politicizing their investigations in favor of Democrats as he gets set to approve the release of an explosive memo alleging the agency’s abuse of power.

The extraordinary accusation is the latest salvo in the president’s open conflict with the top US law enforcement agency amid an investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with a Russian effort to sway the 2016 presidential elections, AFP reported.

Trump is expected to give a green light for the publication of a Republican-drafted memo accusing the agency of abuses in obtaining a warrant to survey a member of Trump’s campaign team over his contacts with Russian officials.

“The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans,” Trump tweeted.

He called the alleged bias “something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!”

Trump nominated both Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray as leaders of their respective departments. The Republican president hand-picked the latter to replace James Comey, whom he abruptly sacked last May.

Now just six months into his tenure, the 50-year-old Wray—who has made clear he does not support releasing the memo—finds himself on a collision course with the president.

The four-page memo was written by Republican lawmaker Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and purports to show the Justice Department and the FBI as deeply politicized, anti-Trump agencies.

Its release would amount to an outright rejection of the FBI’s extraordinary warning Tuesday that it had “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Democrats and critics in the intelligence community say the release is a stunt aimed at casting doubt on the independence of the FBI and Justice Department, using very selective information that cannot be countered publicly without revealing more secrets about government counterintelligence operations.