One day after proclaiming “a really great day for America” and asserting total vindication by the report of special counsel Robert Mueller, President Trump resumed his two-year campaign of attacking the investigation, aiming special ire at witnesses who gave investigators notes to back up their testimony.
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Trump tweeted from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where he is spending Easter weekend.
“Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” the president continued. “Because I never agreed to testify, it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the ‘Report’ about me, some of which are total bulls*** & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad).”
In a redacted version of Mueller’s 448-page report released Thursday morning, the special counsel concluded there was no evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mueller also declined to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, despite amassing considerable evidence that the president had attempted to shut down the special counsel investigation.
[Full text: The Mueller report]
The report depicted a chaotic environment in the White House in which aides scrambled to avoid carrying out orders by Trump that were potentially illegal or self-destructive, and where his press office lied to cover for him.
In all, Mueller and his team cited 10 episodes of potential obstruction.
Former White House counsel Don McGahn told investigators that Trump asked him twice to tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller. Fearing that such a firing would trigger another “Saturday Night Massacre,” like the one carried out by President Richard Nixon in 1973, McGahn decided to quit, telling then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus that the president had asked him to ‘do crazy s***.’”
According to the report, McGahn took extensive notes of his conversations with the president, which apparently irked Trump.
“Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes,” Trump once told McGahn, according to the report. “I never had a lawyer who took notes. I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He never took notes.” Cohn, a notorious political fixer, was Trump’s mentor and personal lawyer early in Trump’s real estate career.
McGahn, though, wasn’t the only note taker featured in the Mueller report.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff, Jody Hunt, took notes of his conversation with Trump after the president learned that Mueller had been appointed as special counsel.
“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency,” Trump exclaimed, according to Hunt’s notes cited in Mueller’s report. “I’m f***ed.”
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