President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has the authority to order the FBI to examine a hacked Democratic National Committee Server at the center of Russian election meddling, and added the inspector general report on the bureau's Hillary Clinton probe had a "politically correct" conclusion.
Trump spoke with Fox News' Tucker Carlson after his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and covered a variety of issues, including the U.S. intelligence community's assessment Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election.
Part of that election interference purportedly involved Russians hacking into a DNC server and stealing emails during the campaign, but the FBI has never been given access to the server.
"The answer is absolutely it is possible and maybe at some point it will be done," Trump said in regard to whether he will order the FBI to seize and look at the server.
Trump said the FBI arrived at a DNC office one day in 2016 after it was alerted about the email theft, but Clinton campaign manager "John Podesta threw them out of the office and said, 'get out of here.'"
Meanwhile, Michael Horowitz — the Department of Justice's inspector general — released a report last month about the FBI's investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. The lengthy document concluded former FBI Director James Comey was "insubordinate" and some members of the investigatory team — including FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page — showed hostility toward Trump in digital communications.
The report did not conclude, however, that the FBI's decision not to recommend Clinton be prosecuted was wrong. Nor did it say key players in the investigation — Comey, Strzok, Page, and several others — were politically motivated in their work.
"In all fairness to the IG report, it was an unbelievable report, except at the end where they tried to be politically correct," Trump said. "When you talk about bias, there has never been bias like that."
When Carlson asked Trump whether Russia is the "chief adversary" of the U.S., Trump deflected and said he is more concerned with getting a productive dialogue going rather than putting labels on each other.
"Strong military but their economy is smaller than China," Trump said. "I don't want to use the word adversary, we can work together, everybody can do well, and we can live in peace."
Another subject Trump and Carlson broached was immigration. After months of squabbling between Republicans and Democrats, lawmakers have been unable to come up with a measure that would overhaul the nation's immigration laws and keep both sides happy.
Trump blamed Democrats and said they do not even want borders.
"The Democrats want open borders, which is basically saying we want open borders, we want crime," Trump said. "Maybe it's a political philosophy they grew up with, maybe they learned it in school, maybe they are fools. I don't know."
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