Days after a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report of his Russia investigation dropped, Donald Trump is still rage-tweeting. We’re presumably still supposed to believe him that he’s a “stable genius” who should be trusted with the leadership of the United States anyway. On Tuesday afternoon, he took to blatantly lying about the scope of Mueller’s probe, claiming that it didn’t include testimony from those “closest” to him when it’s unclear how much closer to Trump the people could get who Mueller’s team did talk to.
Trump whined:
‘Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller. The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!’
In reality, Mueller’s team spoke to a whole host of people who by any reasonable standard were “closest” to him and — surprise — they didn’t have “only very good things” to share. For instance, still-serving White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blasted through whatever shreds of credibility her team had left by revealing, in Mueller’s team’s description, that a particular claim she offered to reporters about FBI agents breaking with former Director James Comey was “not founded on anything.”
Even more directly rebuffing Trump’s claim, numerous close aides shared stories with the special counsel’s office of the president pushing them to, quite simply, break the law via interfering with the Russia investigation. Among other points, former officials Corey Lewandowski and Rick Dearborn “did not deliver the President’s message to [then-Attorney General Jeff] Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only,” which would have the effect of completely sidestepping all presumed possible scrutiny of the Trump team.
Other similar instances feature individuals the president has since fallen out with, like Comey and former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who refused to try and get Mueller out. Altogether, the Mueller probe covered ten instances of possible presidential obstruction of justice, and it concludes:
‘The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.’
That’s not a conclusion that arises when the close associates who did talk to Mueller only say “very good things.”
Check out Twitter’s response…
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