Trump attacks Mueller probe
Washington: US President Donald Trump attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, and called him an “unelected prosecutor running unchecked”.
In a largely unscripted, wide-ranging speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday lasting more than two hours, Trump also mocked the Democrats’ Green New Deal, called his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions “useless” and took shots at his longtime rival and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, CNN reported.
But he took on Mueller by commenting extensively on key parts of the investigation as the Special Counsel is expected to hand over the probe report to Attorney General William Barr very soon.
“So now we’re waiting for a report, and we’ll find out who we’re dealing with,” Trump said, adding: “We’re waiting for a report by people that weren’t elected.”
“You put the wrong people in a couple of positions and they leave people for a long time that shouldn’t be there, and all of a sudden, they’re trying to take you out with b******t, OK,” he added.
The President also accused the Special Counsel’s team of investigators of being stacked against him.
“Robert Mueller never received a vote and neither did the person that appointed him,” Trump said in an apparent reference to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who named Mueller as Special Counsel in May 2017.
Trump also argued that Mueller was compromised due to his prior interest in being Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director after Trump fired James Comey, and reiterated an allegation that Mueller and Comey are “best friends”. Comey has denied this claim.
He also said that Comey was fired because he was “a bad, bad guy”, CNN said.
He also bashed Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation and delegate overseeing the Special Counsel to Rosenstein, impersonating Sessions with a thick Southern accent.
Regarding his failed summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the President said the US had learned a lot since the sudden conclusion of his summit. “I had to walk, because every once in a while, you have to walk.”
Trump also came out against the Green New Deal, calling the progressive climate plan an attempt by Democrats to “completely take over American energy and completely destroy America’s economy through their new $100 trillion Green New Deal which somebody described as a high school term paper written by a poor student”.
Trump specifically targeted 2020 Senator Warren of Massachusetts, claiming that he’s destroyed her career such that she won’t be the Democratic nominee he’ll face in 2020.
