Pressed on the president's tweets, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Donald Trump was "making the point that we would like our FBI agencies to not be focused on something that is clearly a hoax." | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images White House walks back Trump's criticism of FBI over Florida shooting

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that President Donald Trump was not attacking the FBI when he wrote on Twitter last weekend that the bureau spent “too much time trying to prove Russian collusion” and that it “missed all of the many signals” from the man police say killed 17 people at a high school in Florida last week.

“I think he was speaking not necessarily that that is the cause,” Sanders said at the White House press briefing, the first in a week. "I think we all have to be aware that the cause of this is that of a deranged individual that made a decision to take the lives of 17 other people."


“That is the responsibility of the shooter, certainly not the responsibility of anybody else," she said.

Trump has complained about the ongoing investigation — now led by special counsel Robert Mueller — into allegations that his presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. His willingness to wade in has broken with a longstanding White House tradition dictating that presidents allow the Justice Department to operate independently.

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"Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter," Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday. "This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!"

Pressed on the tweet, Sanders said Trump was "making the point that we would like our FBI agencies to not be focused on something that is clearly a hoax in terms of investigating the trump campaign and its involvement."

