Nick Ackerman, a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor, called the report that President Trump ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to be fired in the summer of 2017 an “astounding evidence of consciousness of guilt.”
Appearing on MSNBC Thursday just moments after the New York Times’ bombshell report was published, Ackerman said such an action by the president would suggest evidence of a coverup.
“Why would he want to fire Mueller unless he’s trying to cover something up, and it’s clear to me that what he’s trying to cover up is the conspiracy between him, his campaign, and the Russian government,” Ackerman said.
Mueller, who was tapped to be special counsel in May 2017, came on to lead the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Mueller’s team has also been looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
The Times report said Trump stepped off his order to fire Mueller only after White House counsel Donald McGahn threatened to quit.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he is “looking forward” to sitting down with Mueller for an interview, but Ackerman called this a “charade” and said that Trump’s allies in Congress pushing for the release of a controversial surveillance memo shows an effort to discredit the Mueller.
“They’re just hoping that something sticks and it’s obvious to me based on this new news tonight that the president is behind all of this,” he said. “That he says one thing but he’s got other people doing other things.”
“The bottom line is, it just shows he’s guilty,” Ackerman added, though he couldn’t say what.
Ackerman has long suggested that he thinks Trump committed some sort of wrongdoing.
He said at the end of last year that the “big enchilada” crime Trump and his associates face in the Russia investigation is conspiracy, not collusion.
