Trump to put out ‘major Counter Report’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that his lawyers are preparing a “major Counter Report” in response to expected findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Trump confirmed the plan in a spate of angry morning tweets in which he also took fresh aim at Mueller and his legal team, accusing them of conflicts of interest and overzealous prosecutions that have “wrongly destroyed people’s lives.”
“We will be doing a major Counter Report to the Mueller Report,” Trump said. “This should never again be allowed to happen to a future President of the United States!”
The president’s confirmation of the plan appears to have been spurred by reports that his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and others were doing little to prepare to rebut Mueller, who is also looking at whether Trump has obstructed justice.
Trump said 87 pages had already been written, adding, “obviously cannot complete until we the see the final Witch Hunt report.”
His earlier tweets seeking to undercut Mueller’s credibility came ahead of court filings from prosecutors that could shed more light on the scope of an investigation that has become increasingly perilous for the president. By the end of the day Friday, Mueller spelled out in detail why prosecutors accused Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, of lying to them and breaking a cooperation agreement. Separately, the special counsel’s office and federal prosecutors in New York recommended four years in prison for Michael Cohen, Trump’s former loyalist and lawyer, in filings that could detail the extent of his cooperation against Trump in multiple investigations.
In a half-dozen tweets Friday morning, Trump aired many familiar grievances, including an accusation that Mueller was ignoring “corruption” by Democrats and would produce a “Republicans only Report.”
Among other things, Trump also alleged that one of Mueller’s conflicts of interest was being “Best Friends” with former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump referred to as “Leakin’ Lyin’ James Comey.”
Comey and Mueller, both veterans of the Justice Department, have known each other for more than a decade and have said they respect one another, but associates of both men say they are not personal friends and did not socialize outside work functions. Both men were registered Republicans for most of their adult lives.
Trump fired Comey last year as he was investigating possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia. The firing has been scrutinized by prosecutors as they examine whether the president has obstructed justice.
Trump also went after Andrew Weissmann, a top Mueller lieutenant who has led the prosecution of Manafort. The former Trump campaign chairman has been convicted of tax evasion and fraud charges related to his past work consulting for a Russianbacked political party in Ukraine.
Trump wrote that Weissmann has a “horrible and vicious prosecutorial past” and that he “wrongly destroyed people’s lives, took down great companies” and is “doing same thing to people now.”
Weissmann’s career stretches back decades, during which he pursued mobsters, Enron executives and white-collar criminals. During that time, he earned a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor, one particularity effective at flipping witnesses to provide evidence against others.