U.S. President Donald Trump is continuing to lash out at special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, a few days after a redacted version was released to the public, calling it a “total hit job.”
“The Trump Haters and Angry Democrats who wrote the Mueller Report were devastated by the No Collusion finding! Nothing but a total “hit job” which should never have been allowed to start in the first place!,” Trump said Sunday, adding in a separate tweet that “Despite No Collusion, No Obstruction, The Radical Left Democrats do not want to go on to Legislate for the good of the people, but only to Investigate and waste time.”
The 448-page report outlined the findings of the 22-month probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and if Trump . Investigators determined no one on Trump’s campaign knowingly conspired with Russia, however they declined to exonerate the president on charges that his actions obstructed justice.
The report describes at least 10 episodes involving Trump and of potential obstruction of justice after he learned about the investigation.
Since the report’s release Thursday, Trump has been angrily criticizing it, even as he spends Easter weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“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 on Saturday. At a a second post, Trump referred to parts of the report as “bulls—,” but did not explain more.
Democratic lawmakers
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler issued a subpoena Friday to get Special Counsel Mueller’s full report.
Nadler said Attorney General William Barr’s “redactions [to the report] appear to be significant,” leaving “most of Congress in the dark.” The Democratic lawmaker added that he and his colleagues “have so far seen none of the actual evidence that the Special Counsel developed to make this case.”
In a statement released Friday evening, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) called the subpoena “premature and unnecessary.” The statement quoted a DOJ spokeswoman as saying the Mueller report was issued with “minimal redactions” and that some members of Congress would have access to a version with fewer redactions.
For months, Democratic congressional leaders had been clamoring for the speedy release of the findings of Mueller’s probe into whether President Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. Now that the redacted version of the report has been released, they are confronted with a choice: stay on the attack or move on. Nadler says he wants Mueller to testify before the committee no later than May 23.
Late last month, Barr released his summary of the report’s findings, and said the special counsel had concluded that Trump had not colluded with Russia, but reached no decision on whether he had obstructed justice.
“One thing is clear,” Senate leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement, ” Attorney General Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice, while Mueller’s report appears to undercut that finding.”
