White House: FBI has ‘extreme bias’ against Trump

White House spokesman J. Hogan Gidley ripped the FBI in an interview with Fox News on Friday, saying the bureau has an “extreme bias” against President Trump in the wake of the release of anti-Trump text messages between two FBI officials.

“It is troubling, deeply troubling, that the revelations have now come to light that there is extreme bias against this president with high-up members of the team there at the FBI who were investigating Hillary Clinton at the time,” Gidley said on “Fox & Friends.” 

“We’re a little concerned at what we’re seeing here. Obviously, those text messages give us quite a bit of pause and should be eye-opening at an agency that should be, quite frankly unbiased,” he added. 

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Gidley’s comments come after more than 300 text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok — who was assigned to the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s private email server she used as secretary of State — and in-house attorney Lisa Page were provided to Congress, after they were provided to the press. 

Fox News first reported on the text messages on Dec. 6, saying more than 10,000 texts between Page and Strzok had been found and were under review. 

Strzok had been assigned to the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, though he has since been pulled from that duty.

The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it did not authorize the release of the text messages, which show Strzok and Page openly criticizing Trump and other lawmakers during the election and supporting Clinton.

Strzok called Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) “an idiot like Trump,” and Page called Trump “a loathsome human.” 

“God, Hillary should win 100,000,000 – 0,” Strzok said in one message to Page. 

Strzok was removed from his assignment after special counsel Robert Mueller learned of the texts, but Trump has ramped up his criticism of the FBI this month, saying on Twitter that “its reputation is in tatters.”

Trump is scheduled to visit the FBI National Academy on Friday to participate in its graduation ceremony, and Gidley said on Fox that “the president is absolutely supportive of and has full faith and confidence in the rank-and-file members of the DOJ and also the FBI.”