Former Vice President Joe Biden said President Trump’s attacks on the FBI and Justice Department are doing “everything” that Russian President Vladimir Putin “ever wanted.”
“This is the first president to make a full-throated, unvarnished attack on the entirety of the FBI,” Biden told CNN in a portion of an interview that aired Tuesday. “Not going after J. Edgar Hoover, who was one person in the FBI. This is to discredit the FBI and discredit his own Justice Department. I spent a lot of time traveling around the world. What do you think they’re thinking in Moscow? This is doing everything that Putin ever wanted — sowing doubt about whether or not our justice system is fair, sowing doubt about whether or not there is anything that is remotely consistent with our Constitution. It’s a disaster.”
Trump has accused officials within the FBI and Justice Department of having a bias against him and Republicans, and has taken to Twitter several times to denounce the agencies.
Most recently, the president accused leaders within the law enforcement agencies of politicizing the “sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans” in a tweet Friday.
In addition to criticizing Trump for his condemnations of the FBI and Justice Department, Biden said he would advise Trump not to sit down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller if he were a member of the president’s legal team.
“You’re in a situation where the president has some difficulty with precision,” Biden said. “And one of the things that I would worry about if I were his lawyer is him saying something that is simply not true without him even planning to.”
Trump has said publicly he would be willing to speak with Mueller as part of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
But according to the New York Times, the president’s lawyers are advising him not to do so. Trump’s lawyers reportedly fear he could be charged with lying to investigators.