Trump has no plans to talk with Mueller
President says the inquiry ‘has hurt our government’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that it “seems unlikely” that he’d give an interview in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Trump said “we’ll see what happens” when asked if he’d provide an interview to Mueller’s team.
“When they have no collusion and nobody’s found any collusion at any level, it seems unlikely that you’d even have an interview,” Trump said during a joint news conference with the prime minister of Norway.
The special counsel’s team of investigators has expressed interest in speaking with Trump, but no details have been worked out. Trump’s lawyers have previously stated their determination to cooperate with requests in the probe, which has already resulted in charges against four of Trump’s campaign advisers.
Trump called the investigation a “phony cloud” over his administration.
“It has hurt our government,” he said. “It was a Democrat hoax.”
The comments come after Trump had already lashed out at the investigations on Twitter on Wednesday morning, urging Republicans to take control of the inquiries and repeating his assertion that they are on a “witch hunt.”
“There was no collusion, everybody including the Dems knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes,” he tweeted. “Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing. Republicans should finally take control!”
In a separate tweet Wednesday morning, Trump accused Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of being “underhanded and a disgrace” for disclosing details of a dossier of allegations about his ties to Russia during the presidential campaign.
Also Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, and FBI Director Christopher Wray were on Capitol Hill to speak to North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA. Neither senator, who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee, would comment on the meeting’s purpose.