Sarah Sanders issues a scathing response to NYT report of FBI investigation into Trump before Mueller probe

The White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to a damaging report from the New York Times with a scathing statement released Friday.

"This is absurd," the statement began.

"James Comey was fired because he's a disgraced partisan hack," Sanders continued, "and his Deputy Andrew McCabe, who was in charge at the time, is a known liar fired by the FBI."

"Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push America around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia," the statement concluded.

The report said that the FBI began an investigation into whether the president was "working on behalf of Russia against American interests," just after he fired James Comey from his position as the director of the FBI.

The probe was meant to test whether the firing of Comey was something that could be considered a national security threat, according to the report. It has since been handed off to special counsel Robert Mueller.

On CNN, one of the reporters responded to the statement from the White House.

"I'm not sure that response has anything to do with my reporting," Adam Goldman laughed.

"The facts are what they are, and if you think about what Jim Baker," he continued, "the general counsel to the FBI, told Congress behind closed doors, and we quoted from his testimony, it's really extraordinary thinking, that the object of the obstruction, right, the possible obstruction was the Russian investigation from 2016, and the act of firing Comey, he told Congress, was a national security threat."

"A national security threat," he repeated for emphasis.

Here's the report on the NYT story from CNN: