Trump: No bid to fire Mueller
Times story ‘fake news,’ he asserts
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday denied that he had ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia probe, and Senate Democrats said they would seek to ensure that continuing budget negotiations included legislation to protect Mueller from being fired.
The New York Times reported Thursday evening that Trump ordered Don McGahn, his top White House lawyer, to dismiss Mueller in June, just weeks after Mueller took over the Russia investigation. The president relented after McGahn refused to ask the Justice Department to fire Mueller and threatened to quit.
Trump responded to the
Times report during a trip to Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum, a gathering of world leaders and global business executives.
Upon arrival at the Congress Center in Davos, Trump was greeted by a large group of reporters asking why he had ordered Mueller’s firing.
“Fake news, folks,” Trump replied. “Fake news. Typical New York Times fake story.”
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the Senate, said the Times report demonstrated the urgency for Congress to act.
“The most important thing Congress can do right now is to ensure that special counsel Mueller’s investigation continues uninterrupted and unimpeded,” Schumer said. “No one — whether it be administration officials, Republicans or the president himself — should get in the way and undermine the investigation.”
The move by the Democratic leadership escalates previous efforts by lawmakers in both parties to stave off a possible constitutional crisis should Trump try to shut down the Russia investigation by getting rid of Mueller. Over the summer, amid reports that Trump was considering that possibility, members of the parties introduced legislation to prevent that from happening.
One measure, co-sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Cory Booker, D-N.J., would require a judge’s review to ensure a special counsel is fired for cause and not for political reasons.
Another proposal, introduced by Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Christopher Coons, D-Del., would require a Senate-confirmed official at the Justice Department to discipline or fire a special counsel.
“The timeline is critical here,” Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin said Friday, noting that Trump sought to fire Mueller in June and the bills were introduced in August. Since the bills’ introduction, Keylin said, “the chatter that the administration is considering removing special counsel Mueller has completely come to a halt.”
DEMOCRATS PROD GOP
The latest Democratic efforts would require cooperation from Republicans, who control the Senate and the House, as both parties negotiate over must-pass legislation to fund the government. The deadline for passing the spending plan is Feb. 8.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Friday that Congress
should now pass the legislation to protect the special counsel, urging his Republican and Democratic colleagues to work out any differences in approach to make it happen.
Warner, speaking on CNN, said he could not think of any reason “why you wouldn’t want to pass that legislation if you respect the rule of law.”
Democratic aides said they hoped Republicans would join their call to include such protections for the special counsel in budget negotiations. They said lawmakers would be working during the
next several days to merge the best parts of previous legislation that sought to do so.
“This remarkable report makes scarily clear that we need this protection right away for the special counsel,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Friday. “It’s necessary now to send a signal to the president that political interference and firing the special counsel simply is totally unacceptable, and there’s bipartisan unanimity that it would be unconscionable and unacceptable.”
Blumenthal said some Republican
senators have told him they support such protections. He did not name them.
Republican leaders showed no new urgency to address the matter, saying that the president’s threats are isolated and in the past.
“If these latest reports are true, it seems to me that they show the president listened to good advice from his advisers,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over any special-counsel bill, said Friday. “Based on his statements from the last couple weeks, he and his lawyers appear to be cooperating with Mueller.”
Lawmakers have thus far not been able to reconcile the two bills on protecting Mueller and satisfy Grassley, who says he has “constitutional concerns” with the legislation and will address only one bill in committee.
Moderate Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, Pa., predicted that the news that McGahn “prevented an Archibald Cox moment” — a reference to the prosecutor whose firing President Richard Nixon ordered during the Watergate scandal — would increase pressure to “protect Mueller.”
Senior Republicans have previously said that they would not support the firing of Mueller.
A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Friday that the speaker’s position has not changed since Ryan said in June that Mueller should be left alone to do his job. And a spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said Cornyn still thinks it would be a “mistake” to fire the special counsel.
Arkansas’ Republican senators also stood behind Mueller.
“We are a nation of laws and Robert Mueller was appointed to carry out an investigation. He should continue moving forward,” U.S. Sen. John Boozman said through a spokesman Friday.
Asked about Mueller, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton replied: “He’s said before he respects the special counsel’s investigation. We don’t have any comment on the specific report from [Thursday.]”
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., reiterated Friday that Republicans in the House would oppose any attempt by Trump to fire Mueller.
“It would just be a political firestorm, and you would just be presumed guilty whether you are or not,” said Cole, who had hired McGahn to be his counsel when he was the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee. “It’s easier to rebut the outcome than deal with suspicions about why you fired somebody. It would be taken as a confession of guilt. And every analogy would be Nixon and the Saturday Night Massacre.”
PAST DENIALS
The reported June incident has the potential to emerge as an important part of Mueller’s probe, part of which is looking into whether Trump or anyone in the White House or associated with his campaign obstructed justice by trying to impede investigators looking into the possibility of campaign-related collusion with Russia.
Trump’s reported order to fire Mueller came in the month after the president fired FBI Director James Comey, later citing the Russia probe as a reason for his decision. At the time, Comey was in charge of the FBI’s investigation into collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. The firing of Comey in May directly led to Mueller’s appointment.
Trump’s denial of the reported June incident echoes repeated statements by the president and other White House officials that Trump had never considered firing the special prosecutor.
“I haven’t given it any thought,” Trump told reporters in August. “Well, I’ve been reading about it from you people. You say, oh, I’m going to dismiss him. No, I’m not dismissing anybody.”
John Dowd, the president’s personal lawyer, said that same month that firing Mueller has “never been on the table, never.”
But four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation, said Trump ordered the firing, citing what he believed were three reasons that Mueller has a conflict of interest that should prevent him from leading the Russia investigation.
Those included claims about a disputed payment of fees by Mueller at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va.; the fact that Mueller worked at the same law firm that represented Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Mueller’s interview with the president to be FBI director before he was appointed to be the special counsel.
Since then, Trump has largely stopped talking about explicitly trying to fire Mueller but has instead shifted to accusing Mueller and his team of being biased and unable to complete a fair investigation.
The latest evidence the president has cited was a string of text messages from a former agent on Mueller’s probe, which show that agent vociferously opposing the president. But Mueller swiftly removed the agent, Peter Strzok, from his investigation after learning about his texts. Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear and Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times; by Tom LoBianco, Chad Day, Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press; by John T. Bennett and Niels Lesniewski of CQRoll Call; by Karoun Demirjian and Rosalind Helderman of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.