President Donald Trump said Friday he wants Attorney General Bill Barr to take his investigation into the Russia probe global and examine events in Great Britain, Australia, and Ukraine.
'It was an attempted coup or an attempted take down of the president of the United States. It should never ever happen to anybody else,' Trump fumed as he left the White House en route to Japan.
He explained his order granting Barr declassification authority and ordering the intelligence community to cooperate.
'I’ve declassified everything. He can look,' Trump said.
'I hope he looks at the U.K. And I hope he looks at Australia. And I hope he looks at Ukraine. I hope he looks at everything. Because there was a hoax that was perpetrated on our country,' Trump said.
Trump demands that the agencies 'shall promptly provide such assistance and information as the Attorney General may request in connection with that review'
Trump praised British Prime Minister Theresa May on a day she announced she was stepping down, but said he may raise the issue with her personally on his upcoming trip to Great Britain, France, and Ireland.
He indicated he may raise allegations of British 'spying' on his campaign. His previous claims of U.K.-directed spying have brought furious responses from the U.S. ally. British intelligence has called the claim 'ridiculous.'
'I may very well talk to her about that. Yeah, there's word and rumor that the FBI and others were involved, CIA were involved with the UK having to do with the Russian hoax, and I may very well talk with her about that,' Trump said Friday.
When Trump raised the issue on Twitter last month, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters released a statement saying: 'The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct "wire tapping" against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.'
Trump said the internal documents Barr has authority to reveal could number in the millions.
'I declassified, I guess, potentially millions of pages of documents. I don't know what it is. I have no idea. But I want to be transparent. Everybody wanted me to declassify. I've done it. You could almost says he's the trustee,' Trump said, referring to Barr.
'People have been asking me to declassify for a long period of time,' Trump said, without saying where the pressure was coming from.
'I've decided to do it, and and you're going to learn a lot. I hope it's going
