WASHINGTON — The special counsel’s Russia investigation is not only a political witch hunt but “an attack on our country,” President Donald Trump complained Monday, exhibiting mounting concern about the yearlong probe after federal authorities raided the offices of his personal attorney. “We’ll see,” he said, when asked if he might fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump let loose after federal agents pierced the protective bubble around him, seizing records from the offices of longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen, on topics including a $130,000 payment made to a porn actress who says she had sex with Trump more than a decade ago.
Cohen has been an ardent defender in Trump’s business, personal and political affairs for more than a decade — Cohen claims to have used a personal home equity loan to pay the adult film actress, known as Stormy Daniels — and the probe’s expansion into the president’s inner circle left Trump fuming.
He unleashed his sharpest invective to date against the sweeping investigation, calling the Monday search “a disgrace.”
“It’s an attack on our country in a true sense,” he said, flanked by the nation’s top military brass, who watched the scene stone-faced. “It’s an attack on what we all stand for.”
The president didn’t bat away the idea of firing Mueller, saying people have advised him to take that action: “Why don’t I just fire Mueller? Well, I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on — we’ll see what happens.”
He said the raid in New York marked a “whole new level of unfairness” by Mueller and his team.
Trump called the probe a “witch hunt,” as he has many times in the past, complaining that it distracts from serious issues such as consideration of a military response to the apparent use of a chemical weapon on Syrian civilians over the weekend. That was the intended subject of his Monday evening meeting with the defense secretary, the joint chiefs of staff and U.S. combat commanders.
Instead, with reporters in the room and cameras rolling, Trump opened the meeting with an unprompted four-minute critique of Mueller’s investigation. “I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man,” Trump began, referring to agents who had obtained search warrants from a federal judge.
The raid on Cohen’s office was conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan and was based at least partly on a referral from Mueller, according to Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan.