President Donald Trump’s eldest son suggested Tuesday that the investigation around his father’s campaign has been fueled by government higher-ups who have conspired to block the President’s agenda.
“There is, and there are, people at the highest levels of government that don’t want to let America be America,” Donald Trump Jr. told a gathering of young conservative activists in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump Jr.’s freewheeling comments before the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit came after he spoke earlier this month before congressional investigators and as some on the right, including him, increasingly attack the Department of Justice’s special counsel probe, alleging it is politically compromised.
In his remarks Tuesday, Trump Jr. railed against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and attacked the media’s coverage of the Russia story, saying the ongoing probe was emblematic of the kind of “rigged system” the President had railed against during the campaign.
“My father talked about a rigged system throughout the campaign, and people were like, ‘Oh, what are you talking about?’ ” Trump Jr. said. “But it is. And you’re seeing it.”
Earlier this month, CNN reported that former FBI Director Mueller had removed FBI agent Peter Strzok from the special counsel team after an investigation turned up anti-Trump text messages Strzok had exchanged during the presidential campaign. In one exchange in August 2016, Strzok wrote, “There’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
Trump Jr. asked those before him to “imagine what would happen if we rolled back the clock to 2008” and a politically compromised group of FBI officials sought to undermine a potential Obama presidency.
“What do you think would happen?” Trump Jr. asked. “Do you think the media would cover that? Yeah. Do you think it would be brushed under the rug like, ‘Oh, it’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.’ There’d be revolution in the streets. So I’m glad that this is coming out now, because it is good, because real people have to see this.”