President Donald Trump said Friday that James Comey's actions prior to his firing were 'criminal' and called the agency's past leadership 'scum'

'They just seem like criminal acts to me. What he did was criminal,' Trump said of the fired FBI chief, during an impromptu half-hour appearance on 'Fox & Friends.'

'What he did was a terrible thing to the people,' the president added of the law enforcement nemesis whom he canned in May 2017.

'What he did was so bad in terms of our Constitution, in terms of the well-being of our country. What he did was horrible.'

But 'should he be locked up?' Trump asked. 'Let somebody make a determination.'

He added that he would personally 'never want to get involved with that.'

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President Donald Trump spent a half-hour Friday on 'Fox & Friends,' the morning program that has been the most reliably friendly to him, sniping about fired FBI director James Comey

The president was mobbed as he left the West Wing, with reporters staking out the location following a tweet foreshadowing his appearance

Trump also covered immigration, trade, the G7, Russia and his birthday on Thursday during Firday morning's media extravaganza

Trump said he's popular among the FBI's rank-and-file.

'I mean the real FBI, not the scum on top.'

He told reporters during another 18-minute session on his way back into the White House that the 'real FBI' is on his side.

'Those guys love me, and I love them,' the president proclaimed.

The FBI scandal was just one of many topics Trump covered Friday morning, both on the air and afterward in what became the biggest press scrum of the year.

He said the global crisis that unfolded after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 wasn't his fault because if happened during his predecessor's administration.

'I want to make it [clear] so the fake news prints it properly,' he sniped. 'President Obama lost Crimea because Putin didn't respect President Obama, didn't respect our country.'

Secret Service everywhere: Trump's security detail accompanied him to the North Lawn from the West Wing before his surprise appearance on Fox News

The president stood and took questions from mostly non-Fox reporters for another 18 minutes after his TV interview

The president boasted of his summit with Kim Jong-un, brushing off a question about why he's letting the North Korean dictator off the hook for human rights violations in the pursuit of more important goals.

'You know why? Because I don’t want to see a nuclear weapon destroy you and your family,' Trump said.

'I don’t want to see a nuclear weapon destroy you and your family. I want to have a good relationship with North Korea. When I came in people thought we were probably going to war with North Korea. If we did, millions of people would have been killed.'

He also joked that he wishes his own staff would 'sit up at attention' like Kim's terrified aides, some of whom have been fired, exiled or executed.

And, the president added, Kim now has a 'very direct' phone number to reach him at the White House.

Comey has become a one-man Trump wrecking crew this year, promoting a book that casts himself as a moral crusader and Trump as a corrupt autocrat.

The release of a Justice Department inspector general report on Thursday – what Trump called 'a horror show' – added more fuel to the White House's return-fire flamethrower.

'Maybe more importantly than anything, it totally exonerates me,' he said of the 568-page tome. 'There was no collusion, there was no obstruction, and if you read the report you’ll see that.'

'What you’ll really see, is you’ll see bias against me and millions, and tens of millions of my followers. That is really a disgrace.'

The report showed Comey presided over an agency where senior officials talked privately about how much they hated Trump and how far they would go to stop him from winning the White House.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in particular were faulted for their biases.

The president is pictured here with press aides Hogan Gidley (center) and Raj Shah (right) after his marathon TV interview and press availability

The president's sudden emergence from the West Wing was closely watched nationwide

Yet despite ample suggestion of a political slant animating people like Strzok, who led investigative teams for both the Clinton email probe and the special counsel's Russia investigation, the IG concluded that there was no harm, no foul.

Trump wasn't buying it.

'The end result was wrong. There was total bias,' he insisted. 'The IG blew it at the very end.'

He compared it to Comey's famous July 5, 2016 press conference in which he listed examples of Clinton mishandling classified information before declaring that she hadn't committed any crimes.

'It was almost like Comey,' the president said Friday. 'He goes point after point about how guilty Hillary is' before exonerating her.

And 'don't forget,' Trump cautioned, 'all of these people like Strzok – what he did was criminal. Strzok and so many others.'

Trump's Friday morning capped a crazy week that included a Singapore nuclear summit and a contentious G7 trade meeting

The long anticipated inspector general's bombshell report on the Clinton email investigation pointed fingers of blame at 'insubordinate' James Comey but didn't call hm politically biased

FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page exchanged text messages about keeping Donald Trump from becoming president

Trump foreshadowed his surprise Fox appearance by tweeting a hint before going to the North Law.

'McCabe is now up, they all work for Comey,' he said of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. 'And Comey knew everything that was going on. You think McCabe didn't tell him everything?'

'I think Comey was the ringleader of this whole den of thieves. It was a den of thieves,' Trump said.

The president also hinted that Strzok's days with a government job could be numbered.

'I don't know how Peter Strzok is still working there, to be honest,' he said, but declared that he intended to remain hands-off about Justice Department personnel matters.

'I may not stay uninvolved,' he added, however.

Speaking to the larger group of reporters, the president said that Strzok 'should have been fired a long time ago, and others should have been fired.'

Trump had already lashed out Friday at the FBI director he pink-slipped last year – and a pair of romantically involved disgraced Bureau employees – following the release of the damning IG report.

The law enforcement couple, a special agent and a, FBI lawyer, chatted electronically in 2016 about how to stop Trump from winning the White House.

'FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who headed the Clinton & Russia investigations, texted to his lover Lisa Page, in the IG Report, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from becoming President,' Trump tweeted.

'Doesn’t get any lower than that!'

Trump tweeted his disgust about the actions of a few FBI employees earlier on Friday but managed to keep quiet about it all day Thursday while marking his 72nd birthday

'The IG Report is a total disaster for Comey, his minions and sadly, the FBI. Comey will now officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI,' he wrote. 'I did a great service to the people in firing him.'

Trump also boasted that 'good instincts' led him to give Comey his walking papers amid political partisanship in the FBI, and expressed confidenve that his replacement, Christopher Wray, will restore order to the agency.

Thursday's bombshell report outlined conversations between Strzok and Page that had never before seen the light of day.

In one message on August 8, 2016, Strzok reassured Page that she needn't worry about Trump winning the White House.

Trump is 'not ever going to become president, right? Right?!' Page texted Strzok.

'No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,' he responded.