via: Washington Examiner

Donald Trump has launched a petition urging the Justice Department to investigate the Clinton Foundation after requests for a probe by some within the agency were overruled.

High-ranking Justice Department officials had urged the agency to pursue a public corruption investigation earlier this year, but their requests were denied shortly after the FBI was made aware of “suspicious activity” between a foreign donor and the Clinton Foundation. An FBI request for a probe into the Clinton’s multi-million dollar charity was also rejected, as previously reported by theWashington Examiner.

“The DOJ’s decision to deny the FBI’s request is an obstruction of justice and a flagrant dereliction of duty from our elected officials,” reads the Trump’s campaign petition. “The Clinton Foundation has time and time again exposed itself as a culture of corruption, pay-to-play deals, and downright fraud.”

The petition continues, “We demand that the DOJ open an investigation into the corrupt dealings of the Clinton Foundation.”

Trump supporters were notified of the petition via text message on Thursday afternoon, shortly after reports first emerged about the Justice Department’s decision. Trump himself accused Clinton of engaging in “pay-for-play” practices during a rally on Wednesday after a new batch of emails from her tenure as secretary of state raised questions about dealings between her charitable foundation and the State Department.

“A couple of very bad [emails] came out and it’s called pay-for-play and some of these were really, really bad — and illegal,” Trump told voters in Abingdon, Va.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign claimed Clinton and President Obama “colluded” to prevent FBI Director James Comey from recommending criminal charges against the Democratic presidential hopeful last month and have now engaged in the same “political favoritism” through the Justice Department’s denial of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

“Today’s news that President Obama’s Department of Justice overruled three separate DOJ field offices and the FBI in declining to open a public corruption charge against the Clinton Foundation shows a troubling pattern of Obama and Clinton politicizing any government institution for their own personal political interests,” senior communications adviser Jason Miller said in a statement.