'BROKEN PROMISE': Trump's most friendly media backer slams reversal on pursuing Clinton investigation

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Donald Trump.

President-elect Donald Trump's most friendly media ally, as well as others supportive of his presidential bid, criticized his apparent reversal Tuesday on pursuing an investigation against his former opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Breitbart News, the outlet run by his recently appointed White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, blared in a headline on the developments: "BROKEN PROMISE."

The story, however, did not provide a slant against Trump for the evident reversal, which was conveyed by one of his senior advisers Tuesday.

Breitbart gained a reputation throughout the campaign as being the most pro-Trump source of information.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway suggested the president-elect would back off his campaign stance. It hit a boiling point when, during the second presidential debate, Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Clinton's use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state - an issue on which the FBI cleared her of any criminal wrongdoing - as well as the activities of the Clinton Foundation.

Trump said during that debate that Clinton would be "in jail" if he were president. Throughout the final months of the campaign, meanwhile, chants of "lock her up" roared at Trump's raucous rallies.

Screenshot/Breitbart News

Breitbart's homepage Tuesday morning.

"I think when the president-elect, who's also the head of your party, tells you before he's even inaugurated that he doesn't wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content," Conway said Tuesday.

In an interview with CBS earlier this month, Trump said he was still "thinking about" appointing a special prosecutor to pursue charges against Clinton because "she did some bad things," but he said he didn't want to "hurt" the Clintons because "they're good people."

Prior to Conway's interview on "Morning Joe," co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough reported a source close to Trump's transition team said Trump felt Clinton had "been through enough."

Clinton "still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don't find her to be honest or trustworthy," Conway said, adding, however, that "if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that's a good thing to do."

The conservative legal group Judicial Watch, which led a charge on Clinton over her use of the private server, also chastised Trump on Tuesday for his apparent reversal, saying in a statement that the president-elect "must commit his administration to a serious, independent investigation of the very serious Clinton national security, email, and pay-to-play scandals."

"If Mr. Trump's appointees continue the Obama administration's politicized spiking of a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, it would be a betrayal of his promise to the American people to 'drain the swamp' of out-of-control corruption in Washington, DC," the group wrote. "President-elect Trump should focus on healing the broken justice system, affirm the rule of law and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton scandals."

Judicial Watch promised to "vigorously pursue" independent litigation and investigation of Clinton.

Best-selling conservative author Ann Coulter, one of Trump's top supporters on the campaign trail, also criticized the move, suggesting it was not his job to tell the Department of Justice and FBI how to proceed.

Other top Trump allies, however, signaled tepid support of the move. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who encouraged the appointment of a special prosecutor on the campaign trail, said Tuesday that "there's a tradition in American politics that after you win an election, you sort of put things behind you."

"And if that's the decision he reached, that's perfectly consistent with sort of a historical pattern of things come up, you say a lot of things, even some bad things might happen, and then you can sort of put it behind you in order to unite the nation," Giuliani told reporters in Trump Tower, noting that he had just seen a clip of the report. "So if he made that decision, I would be supportive of it. I'd also be supportive of continuing the investigation."

"I think the president elect had a tough choice there, you could go either way," he continued. "If he made the choice to unite the nation, I think, all those people who didn't vote against him, maybe, could take another look at him."