Trump’s fury at FBI

Raid on office of president’s personal lawyer a ‘witch hunt’

A FURIOUS Donald Trump blasted the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller as a “disgrace” and a “witch hunt” on Monday after FBI agents raided the New York offices of the president’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

Agents seized files relating to Mr Cohen’s work, which included making a $130,000 payment before the 2016 election to an adult film actress who says she had a tryst with Mr Trump. Mr Cohen’s own attorney Stephen Ryan said agents were working in part on the request of Mr Mueller, the independent prosecutor investigating links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

At the White House, Mr Trump angrily denounced the raid on Mr Cohen, whom he called “a good man”. “It’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt, I have been saying it for a long time,” he said.

“It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”

The raid came as Mr Mueller’s probe intensified its focus on Mr Trump’s inner circle.

Mr Mueller’s team is examining possible collusion between Mr Trump’s campaign and Moscow, allegations of corrupt behaviour by Trump campaign lieutenants, and of White House efforts to obstruct the investigation.

So far 19 people have been indicted, including the chairman of Mr Trump’s campaign.

Mr Trump accused Mr Mueller on Monday of overseeing a biased investigation staffed by Democrats, “a pure and simple witch hunt”. After having turned over what he called a million pages of documents, Mr Trump said the probe was “now getting ridiculous. They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia”.

Asked if he wanted to fire Mr Mueller, Mr Trump replied: “Many people have said you should fire him. Again they found nothing and in finding nothing that’s a big statement,” he said. “So we’ll see what happens.”