President Trump slammed Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday following the raid of the office of Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime lawyer, in another of the president’s broadside’s against his top law enforcement official.
“The attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this and when he recused himself or he certainly should have let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have put a different attorney general in,” Trump told reporters Monday night ahead of a military leadership meeting at the White House. “So, he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. But you’ll figure that out.”
On Monday, the FBI raided the office and hotel room of Cohen. The prosecutors obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, according to Cohen’s attorney.
Trump called the raid a “disgraceful situation” and a “total witch hunt,” and later added “many people” have told him to fire Mueller, to which he said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 after Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department and FBI’s Russia investigation.
Rosenstein is the only person with constitutional authority to fire Mueller, and must approve matters that fall inside his jurisdiction. Mueller must also follow Justice Department regulations and consult with Rosenstein about how to handle matters outside his jurisdiction.
However, Trump could fire Rosenstein — but did not answer a shouted question on if he will do so.
“They found nothing and in finding nothing that’s a big statement because you know the person who is in charge of the investigation — you know all about that — Deputy Rod Rosenstein, he wrote the letter very critical of Comey,” Trump said.
“Well, I turned out to do the right thing (by firing Comey). If you look at all of the things he’s done and the lies and you look at whats going on at the FBI … turned out I did the right thing. But, it turns out he also signed the FISA warrant — Rod Rosenstein, who’s in charge, also signed the FISA warrant, and he also wrote the letter that fired Comey, and he was right about that. He was absolutely right about that.”
Last week, Mueller’s team filed a memo in federal court in Washington defending charges brought against Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as any forthcoming charges against anyone else.
The memo from Rosenstein stipulates that “a Special Counsel may conclude that investigating otherwise unrelated allegations against a central witness in the matter is necessary to obtain cooperation.”
Trump has long voiced his frustration with Sessions’ recusal, dating back to summer 2017.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
