Donald Trump tweeted that the system is “rigged” after James Comey’s summer news conference, calling the lack of charges “very unfair.” | Getty Trump claims he always had confidence in FBI, despite past slams

Donald Trump on Friday claimed he’s always had confidence in the FBI, despite having railed against the bureau and the Justice Department in July for failing to charge Hillary Clinton for criminal wrongdoing.

“I’ve always had a lot of confidence in the FBI, I’ll tell you,” Trump said Friday during a rally in Wilmington, Ohio. “You have amazing people in the FBI, and they’re not happy. They’re not happy about what’s happening. And they’re not happy about the way they’re being pushed around. And you don’t push them around for long, believe me.”


Trump’s assertion is at odds with what he’s said about the FBI and Justice Department following Director James Comey announcing that he would not be recommending any charges to DOJ against Clinton following its year-long investigation into her private email server as secretary of state.

The Republican presidential nominee tweeted that the system is “rigged” after Comey’s summer news conference, calling the lack of charges “very unfair.” He called the combination of Comey’s decision and an impromptu meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton that preceded it “a total miscarriage in justice.”

Accepting the GOP nomination in Cleveland, Trump knocked Comey for allegedly covering up Clinton’s “terrible crimes.” He remarked that Comey’s statement acknowledging Clinton was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information was “minor compared to what she actually did” but was “just used to save her from facing justice for her terrible crimes.”

He’s since threatened to jail Clinton himself if he’s elected president, vowing to direct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her email server as well as the FBI’s investigation.

In September alone, Trump suggested that FBI investigators didn’t expend much energy looking for Clinton’s emails and intimated that the agency granted so many people immunity that Clinton probably got it, too. He also called on President Barack Obama to promise not to pardon his former secretary of state for “crimes against our country.”

Trump, however, has happily changed his tune since Comey sent a letter to lawmakers last Friday informing them that the bureau would be reviewing additional emails that may be related to its prior investigation.

“I would bet anything: Some of those emails are so bad,” Trump said Friday. “They’re so classified — they’re beyond classified. They have emails there that are beyond classified. And it’s all coming down.”