Mueller team has ‘gone absolutely nuts,’ Trump tweets

WASHINGTON — Fresh off three days of private meetings with his personal lawyers, President Donald Trump renewed his attacks Thursday on the special counsel investigation, calling it “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!”

The barrage, launched on Twitter, ended a period of relative quiet by the president about the investigation, which has ensnared some of his former aides.

Trump wrote: “The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation and don’t care how many lives they ruin. These are Angry People, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller, who worked for Obama for 8 years. They won’t even look at all of the bad acts and crimes on the other side. A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!”

Once he returned from Paris on Sunday, Trump met with his personal lawyers in private meetings and worked to draft answers to questions posed by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Mueller’s team has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and any possible ties to the Trump campaign.

For months, the president’s legal team and aides have pleaded with him to avoid writing Twitter posts about Mueller. The president has long complained privately about what he believes to be Mueller’s conflicts of interest, despite a Justice Department review and conclusion last year that Mueller had none. But by Thursday morning, the president renewed his personal attacks on Mueller and said universities would someday study these conflicts.

But it was unclear what may have motivated Trump’s Twitter posts on Thursday morning.

Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was spotted by an ABC News crew on Monday en route to see Mueller’s team. Cohen has pleaded guilty to a string of crimes, and he said under oath that his client ordered him to make hush payments in 2016 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she once had had sex with Trump.

Meanwhile, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham that Mueller’s investigation will proceed, a person familiar with the meeting told The Associated Press.

Graham and Whitaker met Thursday as a bipartisan group of senators pushes legislation to protect Mueller’s job. The senators are concerned about Whitaker’s past criticism of the probe.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity.