Transcript for FBI opened inquiry into whether Trump secretly worked with Russia: Report

Meanwhile now to the headline overnight involving president trump and the FBI. "The New York Times" reporting the bureau opened an inquiry into whether the president was secretly working on behalf O Russia. ABC's white house correspondent Tara Palmeri joins us this morning with much more. Tara, good morning. Reporter: That's right. "The New York Times" has a bombshell new report saying the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the president of the United States to see if he was a national security threat working on behalf of the Russians against American interests. Now, according to this report the FBI was unsure if the president was even knowingly acting on behalf of the Russians. At the time former FBI director James Comey was overseeing the FBI's investigation into campaign collusion. Special counsel Robert Mueller has since taken over that case but in addition he's been investigating whether the president obstructed justice by firing Comey to end the investigation. But this new report suggests that the FBI was concerned that the president fired Comey on behalf O just days after the firing, trump referred to Comey as a nut job in a private meeting with the Russian foreign minister sergey lavrov in the oval office and he also added that firing him would relieve pressure from the white house. Now, the president has just responded in a tweet to all of this saying, wow, just learned in the failing "New York Times" the corrupt former leaders of the FBI almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some bad reasons opened up an investigation on me for no reason and with no proof after I fired lyin' James Comey, a total sleaze. So as you can see, the president is fired up this morning about this new report. I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about that from him. Guys. All right. Thank you so much, Tara. We appreciate you.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.