With Mueller testimony looming, Trump predicts trouble for special counsel and Dems
President Donald Trump predicted Monday that Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated testimony before Congress this week will “be bad for him,” and again suggested that the former special counsel should not answer questions from lawmakers.
“Highly conflicted Robert Mueller should not be given another bite at the apple,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “In the end it will be bad for him and the phony Democrats in Congress who have done nothing but waste time on this ridiculous Witch Hunt. Result of the Mueller Report, NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION!”
In another post, the president continued: “The questions should be asked, why were all of Clinton’s people given immunity, and why were the text messages of Peter S and his lover, Lisa Page, deleted and destroyed right after they left Mueller, and after we requested them(this is Illegal)?”
Trump employed similar rhetoric in a pair of tweets earlier this month as the House Judiciary Committee moved to authorize subpoenas for a dozen of Mueller's witnesses. "How many bites at the apple do they get before working on Border Loopholes and Asylum," he wrote online, going on to criticize Mueller as "highly ... conflicted and compromised."
Mueller is scheduled to appear Wednesday before hearings of the Judiciary committee and the House Intelligence Committee, where he will face queries from the panels’ Democrats regarding the contents of his report on the findings of his 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and allegations that the president obstructed justice.
Republican lawmakers, however, are expected to interrogate Mueller about alleged bias within his team of federal prosecutors, including anti-Trump sentiments expressed in text messages exchanged between FBI agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page during the bureau’s separate probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia investigation in the summer of 2017 after he learned of the messages, which were unearthed last June in a report by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General.
Trump previously tweeted that “Bob Mueller should not testify” in May, when the House Judiciary Committee was still seeking an audience with Mueller. The president said Friday that he does not plan to view the hearings later this week, telling reporters: “At some point they have to stop playing games.”
