Trump says no Mueller firing

Republicans tried to cast doubt on top cop’s investigation

US President Donald Trump insisted Sunday he has no plans to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, despite his team’s recent attacks on the credibility of the probe into Russian meddling in the US election.

With the ex-FBI director’s investigation making inroads into the president’s inner circle in recent weeks, Republicans have sought to cast doubt on its impartiality and pressed for a new independent prosecutor to investigate anti-Trump bias.

This in turn has led to speculation that the administration could be laying the groundwork for firing Mueller.

But Trump shot down those rumors. Asked whether he was going to fire Mueller, the president told reporters: “No, I’m not.”

In a letter to congressional committees, Trump campaign lawyer Kory Langhofer alleged the General Services Administration (GSA) “unlawfully produced” private materials, including privileged communications that Mueller then used as part of his Russia probe.

The GSA is the government agency that supports presidential transitions – the interim period after a new president is elected but before he takes office.

Langhofer wrote that Mueller’s office “received from the GSA tens of thousands of emails, including a very significant volume of privileged material,” according to a copy of the letter published by Politico.

The letter added that a warrant should have been obtained for such materials, and said it violated the Presidential Transition Act.

Trump said, “my people are very upset about it,” calling the development “quite sad.”

“I can’t imagine there’s anything on them, frankly, because as we said, there’s no collusion. There’s no collusion whatsoever.”

But Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr told CNN that emails were obtained for the probe after “we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.”

Mueller was appointed after Trump abruptly fired then-FBI director James Comey, who was leading an agency probe into the Russia affair.

The president’s Democratic foes have sought to characterize the allegations of illegality as an attempt to stymie the probe, which has already led to charges against Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn and three other people linked to the presidential campaign.