Trump tries to discredit Special Counsel Mueller in tweet just before House testimony
About 35 minutes before Special Counsel Robert Mueller was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, President Donald Trump repeated an accusation that is, based on multiple sources, untrue.
The president said Mueller applied to be director of the FBI but didn’t get the job in a tweet Wednesday morning.
“It has been reported that Robert Mueller is saying that he did not apply and interview for the job of FBI Director (and get turned down) the day before he was wrongfully appointed Special Counsel,” Trump tweeted.
“Hope he doesn’t say that under oath in the we have numerous witnesses,” the president said.
But Mueller’s own report discredits those assertions.
According to Vox: “There’s no evidence Mueller wanted the FBI director job after Trump fired Comey. On the contrary, as detailed in the Mueller report, former White House strategist Steve Bannon told Mueller’s team that he recalled the White House inviting ‘Mueller to speak to the President to offer a perspective on the institution of the FBI.’”
Mueller’s own report cited Bannon as saying, Business Insider reports, “The White House considered ‘beseeching’ Mueller to be the FBI director again, ‘he did not come in looking for the job.’”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller said at a May press conference in Washington that the report his office released following the probe into Russian 2016 election meddling was tantamount to his testimony. His lengthy report found no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to influence the election, but did list 10 possible instances of obstruction of justice by the president during the probe. Mueller also announced his office was closing up shop at the news conference.
But the Democrats who lead the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees in U.S. House of Representatives decided to subpoena Mueller to testify, announcing on June 25 that the former FBI head would appear before lawmakers in open session July 17.
“We look forward to hearing his testimony, as do all Americans,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in a June statement.
Nadler and Schiff acknowledged Mueller’s preference to let his “written work to speak for itself” in their June letter accompanying the subpoena, but the pair wrote that “the American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions.”
Mueller’s May press conference sparked some Democrats to call for Trump’s impeachment, with some pointing to Mueller’s comment that “if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime.”
Those impeachment calls included a handful of Democratic presidential candidates.
“I believe a fair inference from what he heard from Bob Mueller is there would have been indictments returned against this president,” if not for the Justice Department guidance saying a president can’t be charged, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., told reporters during a stop in South Carolina, McClatchy reported. On Twitter, Harris called Mueller’s news conference statements “an impeachment referral.”
This story was originally published July 24, 2019 at 8:25 AM with the headline "Trump tries to discredit Special Counsel Mueller in tweet just before House testimony."
