President Donald Trump pressed his criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday, accusing Mueller’s team of “enjoying ruining people’s lives” and “looking to impact the election.”
Trump’s tweets followed a New York Times report that the White House general counsel, Don McGahn, has been cooperating extensively with the special counsel team investigating Russian election meddling and potential collusion with Trump’s Republican campaign.
Over the weekend, Trump insisted his general counsel isn’t a “RAT” like President Richard Nixon’s and accused Mueller’s team of “looking for trouble.” He contrasted McGahn with John Dean, the White House counsel for Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Dean ultimately cooperated with prosecutors and helped bring down the Nixon presidency in 1974, though he served a prison term for obstruction of justice.
On Monday he called Mueller “disgraced and discredited.”
“Anybody needing that much time when they know there is no Russian Collusion is just someone looking for trouble,” he wrote. “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!”
Trump’s original legal team had encouraged McGahn and other White House officials to cooperate with Mueller, and McGahn spent hours in interviews.
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump didn’t raise executive privilege or attorney-client privilege during those interviews because his team believed — he says now, wrongly — that fully participating would be the fastest way to bring the investigation to a close.
“The president encouraged him to testify, is happy that he did, is quite secure that there is nothing in the testimony that will hurt the president,” Giuliani said.
McGahn’s attorney William Burck added in a statement: “President Trump, through counsel, declined to assert any privilege over Mr. McGahn’s testimony, so Mr. McGahn answered the Special Counsel team’s questions fulsomely and honestly, as any person interviewed by federal investigators must.”
Giuliani, in his interview, also acknowledged that the reason for the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer, arranged by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., was that they had been promised dirt on Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Trump ‘hopes’ ex-CIA chief Brennan sues
President Donald Trump on Monday dared former CIA Director John Brennan to take legal action to try to prevent him from stripping security clearances from other current and former officials.
“I hope John Brennan, the worst CIA Director in our country’s history, brings a lawsuit,” Trump tweeted. “It will then be very easy to get all of his records, texts, emails and documents to show not only the poor job he did, but how he was involved with” the Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller. “He won’t sue!”
The conflict between Trump and Brennan continued as scores more former U.S. national security employees joined a wave of opposition to the president’s threat to continue pulling clearances. To date, more than 250 have publicly expressed opposition.
Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Brennan said he’s been contacted by a number of lawyers about the possibility of an injunction in the wake of Trump’s move to revoke his clearance.
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