Trump opposes FBI probe of supporters surrounding Biden bus

President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested the FBI should stop investigating an incident where his supporters were seen surrounding a Biden campaign bus in Texas, which led Democrats to cancel a meeting there.

The president’s tweet came hours following the FBI confirmed that it was “alert to the incident and investigating.”

On Sunday night, Trump retweeted a screenshot of the FBI statement, adding: “For me, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice ought to be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!”

An FBI spokesperson said the bureau had no comment about the president’s tweet.

Trump’s tweet come as tensions remained high between the president and FBI Director Christopher Wray, and as Trump has pressed the Justice Department and FBI to act against his rivals, including Democratic presidential prospect Joe Biden himself. The president has also told persons around him that he is frustrated with Wray over the FBI director’s public statements on issues like voting fraud, Russian election interference and antifa, and has discussed the opportunity of removing Wray if he wins reelection.

In videos posted on Twitter, several cars and pickups - many adorned with large Trump flags - is seen riding alongside the campaign bus on Friday, and sometimes boxing it in, since it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. At one point, among the pickup trucks can be seen colliding with an SUV that was driving behind the bus.

Neither Biden nor his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, was aboard the bus. The campaign canceled an event later in the day.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted a video of his supporters following Biden campaign bus, adding, “I REALLY LIKE TEXAS!”

The Texas Democratic Party chairperson didn't directly address the incident but said persons should “disregard the noise and go vote.”

“Voting is the only thing that matters right now,” the chair, Gilberto Hinojosa, said in a statement.

This weekend, caravans of Trump supporters also blocked the Mario Cuomo Bridge in New York, which spans the Hudson River between Tarrytown and Nyack, and snarled traffic on the Garden State Parkway in NJ. Videos posted online showed some of the supporters hopping out of their cars on the bridge as rain fell on the roadway, waving Trump flags and cheering.

“We’ve never really had anything such as this. At least we’ve never really had a president who thinks it’s a very important thing,” Biden said during a campaign event in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Trump’s tweet on Sunday underscored the bigger effort by the Trump administration to spotlight and crack down on protest-related violence, especially in cities run by Democratic mayors in order to showcase what Trump says is his law-and-order prowess. Trump has derided protesters and played up the violence around protests, though the majority of them have been peaceful.

The Justice Department has taken over 300 cases against defendants in unrest cases nationwide since May. An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court papers found that hardly any of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, as the president has suggested.