Trump denies collusion with Russia
but says I 'speak for myself'
The president, at a remarkable press
conference, was forced to deny he had done anything worthy of criminal charges
– calling Russia crisis ‘a witch hunt’
Julian Borger , Lauren Gambino and Ben Jacobs in Washington,
and Lois Beckett in New York
Thursday 18 May 2017 23.47 BST First published on Thursday
18 May 2017 16.28 BST
Donald Trump denied any collusion with Russia in the 2016
election but said on Thursday he spoke “for myself”, leaving open for the first
time the possibility that some of his staff may have been involved.
The president claimed he was the target of the “greatest
witch hunt” in US political history and complained that the campaign against
him was dividing the country. But asked about the justice department decision
to appoint a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate contacts between
his campaign and Russia, Trump appeared to shift his position from previous
blanket denials.
“I respect the move,
but the entire thing has been a witch hunt. There is no collusion – certainly
myself and my campaign – but I can always speak for myself and the Russians –
zero,” he said at a joint press conference with the Colombian president, Juan
Manuel Santos.
Trump’s embattled presidency, which has invited increasingly
frequent comparison with Richard Nixon and Watergate, passed a new landmark at
the press conference when he was asked bluntly, in front of a foreign head of
state, whether he recalled anything he had done that “might be worthy of
criminal charges in these investigation or impeachment”.
“I think it is totally ridiculous. Everybody thinks so,”
Trump said.
Mueller is taking over a sprawling investigation into links
between the Trump camp and Russia from the former FBI director James Comey, who
the president fired abruptly on 9 May. It is expected to include scrutiny of
Trump’s fired national security adviser, Michael Flynn, as well as his former
campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and two former advisors, Carter Page and Roger
Stone, and their contacts with Russian officials. All have denied collusion in
Russian efforts to skew the election.
When asked whether he had urged Comey to shut down the Flynn
investigation, Trump quickly replied: “No. No. Next question.”
He then embarked on a vitriolic attack on his former FBI
director, claiming Comey had been “very unpopular with most people” who had had
“a poor, poor performance in Congress”. He appeared to change his justification
for the decision, pointing to a critical memo on Comey’s performance by the
deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.
This was the original reason provided by the White House in
the immediate wake of Comey’s dismissal, but two days later Trump revealed in a
NBC interview: “It was set up a while ago.”
Senators emerging from a closed-door meeting with Rosenstein
on Thursday said he had told them that he believed that the decision to fire
the FBI director had already been made before he wrote his memo.
Dick Durbin of Illinois, the number two Democrat in the
Senate, told reporters that Rosenstein “knew of the president’s decision to
fire him and then he wrote his memo”. This was echoed by several other Senate
Democrats, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
Merkley expressed particular frustration with Rosenstein, saying “he either has
no understanding that his memo was used as a coverup or doesn’t want to take
any accountability for it”.
Republicans were more hesitant to characterize Rosenstein’s
statements inside the closed briefing. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters
that at one point Rosenstein said “no decision is final until its finalized”.
Marco Rubio of Florida simply said, when asked if Rosenstein
knew Comey would be fired when he wrote the memo: “I’m not sure if he addressed
that with a level of clarity that most people wanted.”
At Thursday’s press conference, Trump said his
administration “look forward to getting all these things behind us”.
“Believe me there is no collusion. Russia is fine,” the
president said. He claimed that the FBI had spoiled its reputation in its
investigations of the presidential campaigns in last year’s elections.
“I cherish the FBI. It’s special. All over the world
wherever you go, the FBI is special,” he said, before adding: “The FBI has not
had that special reputation with what happened in the campaign, what happened
with the Clinton campaign, and even you could say, directly and indirectly with
respect to the much more successful Trump campaign.”
Earlier in the day, Trump lashed out in a pair of tweets at
Rosenstein’s decision to hire Mueller, a former FBI director, as special
counsel.
“With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton
campaign and Obama administration, there was never a special councel [sic]
appointed!” he wrote in the first tweet. He later corrected the spelling of
counsel. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American
history!”
Later in the day, Trump said the appointment of a special
counsel was a “very negative thing” that “hurts our country terribly because it
shows we’re a divided, mixed-up, not unified country”.
“It also happens to be a pure excuse for the Democrats,
having lost an election that they should have easily won because of the
electoral college being slanted so much in their way – that’s all this is,”
Trump told television news anchors during a briefing on Thursday afternoon,
according to transcripts posted by several attendees. “I think it shows
division, and it shows that we’re not together as a country.”
Donald Trump and Juan
Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, during a news conference in Washington.
Photograph: Andrew Harrer / POOL/EPA
The commentary marked a shift from the White House statement
released after the announcement, which welcomed Mueller’s appointment as an
opportunity to resolve the questions raised by his campaigns ties to Russia.
“As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will
confirm what we already know – there was no collusion between my campaign and
any foreign entity,” the Wednesday night statement said.
The decision by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein,
to appoint Mueller came after a week of stunning developments, including
Trump’s abrupt dismissal of FBI director James Comey, who was leading the
agency’s Russia investigation.
It also followed reports that Trump had asked Comey to shut
down an investigation into his national security adviser Michael Flynn, who
resigned in February after misleading the vice-president about his contacts
with Russian officials.
As the White House scrambled to contain the fallout from a
week of damaging developments, a fresh series of reports on Wednesday and
Thursday raised more questions about the ties between Trump and Russia.
A report from the New York Times alleged that Flynn had told
the president’s transition team weeks before being appointed that he was under
federal investigation for working, in secret, as a paid lobbyist for Turkey.
Asked about that on Thursday, spokespeople for Mike Pence’s
office issued a statement that read: “The vice-president stands by his comments
in March upon first hearing the news regarding General Flynn’s ties to Turkey,
and fully supports the president’s decision to ask for General Flynn’s
resignation.” In March, Pence said about Flynn’s work for Turkey: “Hearing that
story today was the first I heard of it.”
McClatchy on Wednesday reported that Flynn had intervened to
stop a military plan to retake Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital,
with Syrian Kurdish forces – a move consistent with the wishes of Turkey.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that the Trump campaign had at
least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russian operatives, several more than
previously reported.
A bipartisan chorus of lawmakers have called on Comey to
testify publicly in the wake of the report that Trump had pressured him to stop
the investigation into Flynn, a request that Comey reportedly noted in a memo
circulated with senior staff.
The Senate intelligence committee, one of two congressional
committees investigating Russian interference, has asked Comey to testify
before the committee in both public and private sessions. The committee has
also sent a request to acting FBI director Andrew McCabe “seeking any notes or
memorandum prepared by the former director regarding any communications he may
have had with senior White House and Department of Justice officials related to
investigations into Russia’s efforts”.
Many are calling for former FBI director James Comey to
testify publicly in the wake of reports Trump pressured him to drop the Russia
investigation. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
Special counsel is a position that exists under a statute
that allows the attorney general or a deputy, if the attorney general is
recused, to mount an independent investigation.
As special counsel, Mueller will command broad powers,
including the power to subpoena documents and prosecute any crimes, independent
of Congress. Calls on Capitol Hill for a special prosecutor in the
investigation have percolated for months, but spiked after the firing of Comey,
who was leading an FBI investigation into the matter. The independence of the
investigation fell into question after the firing.
Democrats, who had called for a special counsel, welcomed
Mueller’s appointment, along with a number of Republicans who have come to view
the near daily revelations as an obstacle to their legislative agenda.
On a day of fast-moving developments, Richard Burr, the
chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said a lawyer for Flynn had told
the intelligence committee that his client would not comply with the panel’s
subpoena for personal documents related to the committee’s own probe.
Flynn, through his lawyer, had earlier asked for immunity
from “unfair prosecution” in exchange for agreeing to cooperate with the
committee.
But the committee later seemed to correct Burr’s comments,
saying it had not yet received a response from Flynn’s lawyer.
If Flynn were to refuse to honor the subpoena, that could
leave him in contempt of Congress, but the Republicans on the Senate
intelligence committee would decide how far to push Flynn to get him to comply.
“If he’s really saying the equivalent of ‘nuh-uh,’ it’s
really hard to see how Burr can justify not treating that as contempt,” said
Josh Chafetz, a Cornell University law professor and expert on congressional
investigations. “That would be saying that, ‘Every subpoena we issue is
completely optional.’”
“Subpoenas aren’t optional, so it’s contempt of Congress,”
he added. Contempt of Congress has been a federal crime since the 19th century,
Chafetz said.
Before the committee finds someone in contempt, “usually,
there’s an attempt to negotiate and come to some sort of settlement”, said
Chafetz.
Additional reporting by Tom McCarthy and Jon Swaine
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário