Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo would redirect the ire of Donald Trump by mentioning the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Russia probe, according to a new book.
Former attorney general Bill Barr wrote in his upcoming book, One Damn Thing After Another, that he and Mr Pompeo had a “running joke” to redirect Mr Trump from yelling by saying he hoped the FBI agents involved would be held accountable.
Mr Trump would then go off on a tangent about the investigation, according to a preview of the book from The New York Times.
“By the time the president was done, he had forgotten any gripe he had with Pompeo,” Mr Barr wrote.
Mr Trump continued his tangent into the investigation of Robert Muller during his CPAC speech over the weekend, maintaining that it was a “made up, fictional story”.
“And the fake news would come in and say, ‘Trump loves Russia, he loves Russia’, then we had the Russia Russia Russia hoax, which is now with Durham and Muller and all the rest, just a total hoax,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Barr appointed John Durham as a special prosecutor to investigate the origins of the investigation by the FBI and Robert Muller into Russian election interference in the 2015 election.
The Muller investigation did not find enough evidence to support a prosecution for purported links between Trump and the Moscow-based Alfa Bank.
In a February court filing in the prosecution of former Hilary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann, Mr Durham alleged that a “tech executive” exploited access to the servers of the White House for the “purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump”.
“Now we know that Crooked Hillary not only spied on my campaign, she spied on the White House,” Mr Trump said in his CPAC speech.
“Well, turned out to be true, and I want to thank John Durham for figuring that out. And I believe that’s just the foundation on which a lot of very bad things are going to be learned about what took place.”
Mr Sussman has pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI and has denied any wrongdoing.
Mr Pompeo did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment. During his speech to CPAC over the weekend, he said he missed the “pressure” and “fire” of the Trump administration.
“I miss every single minute of it, I wish we were back out there leading America,” he said.
“I remember we were the barbarians, we were the rubes, we didn’t know what we were doing. We’re pretty competent now,” he added.
