Trump calls Mueller firing report ‘fake’
President pushed back against the report, without addressing the specific allegation
President Donald Trump yesterday dismissed as “fake news” a New York Times report that he ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June, but backed down after White House lawyer Don McGahn threatened to resign.
The newspaper reported on Thursday that Trump demanded Mueller’s firing just weeks after the special counsel was first appointed by Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein.
Trump pushed back against the report, without addressing the specific allegation, as he arrived yesterday at the site of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“Fake news, folks. Fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories,” Trump told reporters.
McGahn said he would not deliver the order to the Justice Department, according to The Times, which cites four people familiar with the president’s request. Trump argued at the time that Mueller could not be fair because of a dispute over golf club fees that he said Mueller owed at a Trump golf club in Sterling, Virginia. The president also believed Mueller had a conflict of interest because he US President Donald Trump said he had not intended to cause offence in Britain by sharing anti-Muslim videos originally posted by a leader of a far-right fringe group and that he would apologise if such people were horrible racists. Trump told ITV’s
show he knew nothing about the group but that he was the “least racist person that anybody’s going to meet” and that his retweet was not an endorsement.
Trump sparked outrage in Britain when he shared the anti-Muslim videos last November and became embroiled in a public spat with British PM Theresa May who criticised him for the retweet. When pressed on whether he would apologise for his retweet, Trump said that if the group was made up of racists then he would. worked for the same law firm that was representing Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, did not immediately return a call for comment on Thursday. Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer working on the response to the Russia probe, declined comment. Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vicechairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said if the report is true, Trump has crossed a “red line.”