Trump Calls Mueller’s Russia Probe a ‘National Disgrace’
Trump Calls Mueller's Russia Probe a 'National Disgrace'
U.S. President Donald Trump has assailed special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election as "a National Disgrace!"
The U.S. leader started the work week with a string of broadsides against the Mueller probe, complaining the prosecutor "is just someone looking for trouble" as he investigates Trump campaign aides' links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the inquiry.
Trump described Mueller as "disgraced and discredited" and said "his whole group of Angry Democrat Thugs" had interviewed White House counsel Donald McGahn for 30 hours "only with my approval, for purposes of transparency." News outlets reported that Trump and his lawyers do not know the full scope of what McGahn told Mueller's team of investigators.
Trump added, "They are enjoying ruining people's lives and REFUSE to look at the real corruption on the Democrat side – the lies, the firings, the deleted Emails and soooo much more! Mueller's Angry Dems are looking to impact the election," the nationwide November 6 congressional contests.
"Where's the Collusion?" Trump asked." They made up a phony crime called Collusion, and when there was no Collusion they say there was Obstruction (of a phony crime that never existed). If you FIGHT BACK or say anything bad about the Rigged Witch Hunt, they scream Obstruction!
Mueller's investigators have uncovered several instances of Trump campaign contacts with Russia, including a mid-2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York in which Trump's oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., met with a woman said to be a Russian government attorney who would offer incriminating material against Trump's election challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton. No such anti-Clinton information emerged from the meeting.
But when news of the meeting surfaced after Trump became president, he dictated a misleading statement about the talks, claiming they were about adoption of Russian children. More recently he has said it was a routine political meeting – opposition research about an election opponent – and he did not know about it in advance.
Mueller has secured guilty pleas from several Trump campaign figures, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos, both of whom have pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about their contacts with Russia.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor, contended Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that "truth isn't truth" in the Mueller investigation, saying that various events in the Trump presidency, and whether he obstructed justice by seeking to block the investigation, are open to interpretation.
Giuliani's comment was widely mocked on social media. On Monday, he sought to clarify it, saying, "My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology, but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic 'he said, she said' puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn't."
Giuliani's statement was focused on conflicting accounts about a meeting early last year at the White House between Trump and James Comey, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and leading the agency's Russia investigation before Trump fired him in May 2017.