With Fresh Threats to Investigate or Oust Mueller, Critics Warn Trump Approaching 'Red Line'
Former White House ethics attorney Walter Shaub sounded alarms Friday in response to growing calls on the political right, and rumblings from within the White House, for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to be ousted amid suggestions that bias is tainting the investigation into alleged Russian interference in last year’s election and possible Trump campaign collusion with that effort.
“The coordinated effort by President Trump and his surrogates to discredit the Mueller investigation raises serious alarms,” said Shaub, now the senior ethics director at the Campaign Legal Center, in a statement. “Rather than making themselves complicit in this assault on the rule of law, Members of Congress should send a clear message to the President that firing Mueller is a red line he must not cross.”
His comments came after Trump’s attorney called for a second special counsel to examine links between the Justice Department and Fusion GPS, a private firm that carried out its own research regarding Trump’s ties with Russia.
Shaub also urged Americans to be prepared to “take to the streets” on Friday after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called on his fellow Republicans to support the firing of Mueller, accusing the special counsel of being “infected with bias” in an interview with CNN.
Trump supporters have pushed reports in recent days of an FBI agent and FBI lawyer who were found to have expressed anti-Trump views in text messages in 2016. The two employees briefly worked on Mueller’s investigative team, but were removed last summer—a legally unnecessary move, considering that FBI and other federal employees are not prohibited from harboring or privately expressing political opinions.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT