Trump steps up his criticism of special counsel Mueller

White House is officially unworried about Russia probe.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump criticized Robert Mueller on Tuesday, calling the special counsel investigating Russian election interference a “conflicted prosecutor gone rogue” who is doing “TREMENDOUS damage” to the criminal justice system.

In morning tweets, Trump employed some of his harshest language to date in an attempt to discredit Mueller as he probes possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign and whether Trump has obstructed the investigation.

“Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie,” Trump said. “Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue . ... The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System.”

Trump also repeated a complaint that Mueller is not looking into the president’s political adversaries.

“The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue .... ” he tweeted Tuesday morning. “The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. “Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his ... terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and ‘Justice’ Department!”

In a briefing for reporters later Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump has “no intent” of getting rid of Mueller despite the tone of his tweets and that she was not aware of any discussions of Trump pardoning people whose lives he said were ruined.

Sanders also reiterated the White House’s view that Mueller’s investigation should come to a close and insisted that Trump has nothing to fear from a report Mueller is preparing on his findings.

“I don’t think the president has any concerns about the report because he knows there was no wrongdoing by him and he knows there was no collusion,” she said.

Trump’s tweets followed several high-profile developments Monday in the investigation by Mueller, who is preparing a report on his findings.

Prosecutors working with Mueller said Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, had breached a plea agreement, accusing him of lying repeatedly to them in the investigation into Russian interference. In a court filing, Manafort denied doing so intentionally.

Also on Monday, conservative author Jerome Corsi said he had rejected a deal offered by Mueller to plead guilty to one count of perjury because he would have been forced to say untruthfully that he intentionally lied to investigators.

Corsi provided research during the 2016 campaign to Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump. For months, the special counsel has been scrutinizing Stone’s activities to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange, in the release of hacked Democratic emails during the campaign. Stone and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied any such coordination.

In another development Monday, one of Trump’s former aides, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, reported to prison after a federal judge rejected a bid to delay the start of his sentence while a constitutional challenge to Mueller’s investigation remains unresolved.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts during the 2016 campaign. But in recent weeks, he has hired a new legal team and complained publicly that he was framed by intelligence agencies looking to smear Trump’s campaign.

Mueller’s 18-month-old investigation has led to charges against 32 people, including 26 Russians. Four aides to Trump have pleaded guilty to various charges, most recently Manafort in September.

Tuesday was the second day in a row that Trump has employed his Twitter account to attack Mueller.

The stepped-up attacks on Mueller have come the week after Trump submitted answers to the special counsel about his knowledge of Russian interference in the presidential election. Before doing so, Trump told reporters that he had answered the questions “very easily.”

In this week’s tweets, Trump has not spelled out why he considers Mueller to be “conflicted.” But aides have pointed in the past to an alleged dispute over membership fees at Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia.

Last year, two White House advisers told The Washington Post that Mueller had a dispute over membership fees when he resigned as a club member in 2011. A spokesman for Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, said there was no dispute when Mueller left the club.

In the past, Trump has also cited the fact that Mueller served as FBI director under President Barack Obama.

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, is accused of lying to investigators in breach of his plea deal.