GOP leaders: Don’t fire Mueller or Rosenstein
WASHINGTON – Leading Republicans urged President Trump on Sunday not to fire the special counsel investigating his actions or the deputy attorney general who supervises the inquiry.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said special counsel Robert Mueller “should be left to do his job.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he sees no basis for firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein despite Trump’s ire about a new investigation Rosenstein authorized of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said bipartisan legislation nearing a vote in the Senate would “send a very strong message that we do not want Mr. Mueller’s investigation interfered with.”
The lawmakers’ warnings represented the latest pushback against Trump’s Twitter tirades, which the president resumed Sunday morning by attacking former FBI director James Comey.
Ryan, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, said, “These career professionals should be left to do their jobs.” Ryan added that legislation designed to protect Mueller, which is set to be voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee soon, may not be needed.
“I don’t think he’s going to fire Mueller. I think it would be a huge mistake,” he said. “First of all, I don’t think he should be fired. ... And I don’t think they’re really contemplating this.”
Ryan acknowledged that although he and Trump have agreed on issues such as tax cuts and military defense, they “have different styles” when it comes to public statements. Trump called Comey a “slimeball.”
“It’s a big-tent party,” Ryan said, “and we represent different corners of the tent.”
On Fox News Sunday, Gowdy said Mueller had little choice but to refer matters involving Cohen to the U.S. attorney in Manhattan after coming across “potential criminality.”
Collins said on ABC’s This Week that firing Mueller wouldn’t help Trump, because “the investigation is still going to go on.”
Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who was fired by Trump, said the president’s tweets and other attacks work against him.
“Every single time the president makes clear that he doesn’t like an investigation of him or his associates and wants that investigation to stop, that adds to the narrative that when he takes action that actually can cause the investigation to stop, that was intentional and is potential obstruction,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.