Donald Trump says he has no plans to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but he does have issues with Justice Department leadership as the game of cat and mouse continues.
President Trump on Sunday sought to douse speculation that he may fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III amid an intensifying campaign by Trump allies to attack the wide-ranging Russia investigation as improper and politically motivated.
Returning to the White House from Camp David, Trump was asked Sunday whether he intended to fire Mueller. “No, I’m not,” he told journalists, insisting that there was “no collusion whatsoever” between his campaign and Russia.
The president’s comments came a day after a lawyer representing Trump’s transition team accused Mueller of wrongfully obtaining thousands of emails sent and received by Trump officials before the start of his administration — a legal and public relations maneuver seen as possibly laying the groundwork to oust the special counsel.
Trump criticized Mueller for gaining access to those emails, telling reporters the situation was “not looking good.”
“It’s quite sad to see that,” Trump said. “My people were very upset about it.”
Mueller’s spokesman denied wrongdoing, and some legal experts questioned the claim that the emails were improperly obtained.
The outcry over Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference grew louder over the weekend among Trump loyalists and conservative media figures. Although Trump has publicly and privately criticized the Department of Justice and the FBI and voiced displeasure with his appointees there, the president’s advisers insisted he is not aiming his ire at Mueller.
“As the White House has repeatedly and emphatically said for months, there is no consideration about firing or replacing the special counsel with whom the White House has fully cooperated in order to permit a fully vetted yet prompt conclusion,” Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer overseeing the Russia matter, said Sunday in a statement.
Trump’s lawyers, who have been assuring the president that Mueller’s investigation is poised to wrap up by January or so, are scheduled to meet with Mueller’s team this week for a routine status conference. They are expected to ask the special counsel if there are any other outstanding questions or materials that investigators need before concluding the probe.
Trump's not angry at Mueller, you see. He expects the investigations to be over and done with next month. He's angry at the people who employed Mueller. After all, Mueller's just doing his job and there's nothing to find because Trump believes he did nothing wrong, so the investigation will be over shortly.
One way or another, it will be over shortly, that is.
Advisers who have spoken recently with Trump about the Russia investigation said the president was sharply critical of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as well as Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller operation — but did not broach the idea of firing Mueller.
“I think he realizes that would be a step too far,” said one adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a private conversation.
Rather, Trump appeared to be contemplating changes in the Justice Department’s leadership. In recent discussions, two advisers said, Trump has called the attorney general “weak,” and complained that Rosenstein has shown insufficient accountability on the special counsel’s work. A senior official said Trump mocked Rosenstein’s recent testimony on Capitol Hill, saying he looked weak and unable to answer questions. Trump has ranted about Rosenstein as “a Democrat,” one of these advisers said, and characterized him as a threat to his presidency.
In fact, Rosenstein is a Republican. In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated him to be U.S. attorney in Maryland.
After all, Trump can't actually fire Mueller himself, he can simply pull a Saturday Night Massacre and fire people in the Justice Department until he finds somebody willing to get rid of Mueller for him.
Trump regime State TV certainly wants him to jettison a lot of people.
Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested that the FBI investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election has maybe transformed into a “coup” against President Donald trump. Before a segment in which Watters interviewed Kellyanne Conway with the chyron, “A COUP IN AMERICA?” the Fox News host went on a rant about what he described as “smoking gun evidence” that the FBI agents investigating Trump are biased against the president.
“The investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign has been crooked from the jump,” Watters said on Saturday night. “But the scary part is we may now have proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy his presidency for partisan political purposes and to disenfranchise millions of American voters. Now, if that’s true, we have a coup on our hands in America.”
Watters specifically criticized FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was fired after he was found to have sent anti-Trump messages to a colleague. And Strzok is hardly alone as a target. Many at Fox have been increasing the rhetoric against FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Because the FBI has always been a hotbed of radical leftist anarchy rather than law and order, or something.
On Saturday night, another Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, outright suggested that the FBI wanted to reverse Trump’s election. She explained her reasoning:
What would you say if I told you your vote doesn’t count? That all the effort into the issues and candidates is a waste of time? That there are people at the citadel of power who believe it is their right to invalidate your choice if they don’t agree with it?
Folks, this is not about politics. It’s much bigger. I doubt in American presidential election history that there has been as great a crime or as large a stain on our democracy than that committed by a criminal cabal in our FBI and the Department of Justice who think they know better than we who our president should be.
FOX News is certainly enjoying lighting all these fuses, priming viewers and all but calling for bloody violence against if Mueller recommends charges against Trump, and the "all but" part will disappear when Mueller does so.
You thought 2017 was bad, folks? 2018 is two weeks away and it already promises to be one of the darkest years in modern American history.
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