Indictments complicate claims of hoax
President adjusts his Twitter attacks after special counsel’s action against Russia
WASHINGTON — Before Friday, when special counsel Robert Mueller handed down a damning indictment against Russians for 2016 election meddling, it was much easier for President Donald Trump to dismiss the entire inquiry as a Democratic hoax and witch hunt.
Trump had long sought to discredit claims of Russian interference, suggesting that email hacks of the Democratic National Committee might instead have been the Chinese, North Korea or a even a hacker sitting in his bedroom.
But Mueller’s steady, relentless probe is complicating Trump’s efforts to spin the Russia debate, cutting off some of his favorite lines of defense and forcing him to adjust his attacks.
Those difficulties apparent in a series of 15 tweets over a 19-hour period late Saturday and early Sunday — an unusual outburst for even this president.
In one, Trump attempted to conflate the Mueller probe with the FBI’s failure to act on warnings about the Florida school massacre shooter.
Trump tweeted that it was “very sad” that the FBI missed clues from accused gunman Nikolas Cruz because, in his view, the agency was preoccupied with the Russia probe. He provided no evidence to back up the assertion, and critics said the assertion was baseless.
“This is not acceptable,” Trump tweeted from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”
In other tweets, Trump seemed to be scrambling to rewrite his past statements and parse his positions — acknowledging Russian meddling but insisting, without evidence, it didn’t affect the outcome of the presidential race or include any collusion with his campaign.
He tweeted that Russians “are laughing their asses off in Moscow” because they had “succeeded beyond their wildest dreams” in sowing discord in the U.S.
In doing do, Trump seemed to again acknowledge Russian interference but suggested that U.S. actions to investigate the activity were weakening the nation.
The indictment handed down by Mueller accused 13 Russians and three Russian companies of orchestrating an elaborate, secret campaign using social media to undermine the Hillary Clinton candidacy while promoting Trump.
In addition to forcing Trump into some untenable positions, the latest indictments also make it much more difficult for Trump to shut down the probe as a waste of time or money, by firing Mueller or Deputy Attorney Gen. Rod Rosenstein, as some reporting has suggested the president has wanted to do.
And it raises new questions about Trump’s steadfast refusal to take any action against Russia as a result of the meddling. Since before taking office, he has refused to criticize President Vladimir Putin or fully enact sanctions against Russia that were approved almost unanimously by Congress as punishment for its interference.
Instead of focusing on focusing on Mueller’s findings about how Russians interfered in the election, Trump has emphasized that the indictments Friday did not specifically target his campaign for criminal wrongdoing.
Trump also took a swipe at his own national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, who on Saturday said the indictment proved that Russian meddling was beyond dispute.
“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians,” Trump tweeted, before launching into his familiar accusation that it was actually Clinton who colluded with the Russians.
Meanwhile, Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a frequent critic of Trump, said Sunday that although the FBI made a “terrible mistake” in dropping the ball on Cruz, it was “absurd” to link that to the Russian investigation. He was speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Numerous Republican and Democratic lawmakers spoke out Sunday to criticize Trump for mixing the issues and for continuing to fail to address the core problem of Russian meddling.
“They’re going to try it again,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” referring to Russian operatives. “Russia is not our friend,” he added, saying that the government of Putin is “trying to subvert our democracy.”
“Americans — not Democrats or Republicans — are the victims,” Gowdy said.