Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the legal team assembled by special counsel Robert Mueller is full of “bad people” who are “going to be after [President] Trump.”
“These are bad people,” Gingrich said in an interview Tuesday with ABC News. “These are people who are going to be after Trump. He did not hire a single Republican in the first wave.”
Gingrich, who previously praised Mueller on Twitter, changed his opinion of the man the Justice Department tapped to oversee the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election Monday. Now, the former House speaker thinks Republicans are “delusional” if they think Mueller and his team is going to be fair, in part because he has hired people who have consistently donated to Democrats.
“We’re in a different world,” Gingrich said. “If you look at the intensity of where we are right now, whether it is someone holding up the bleeding head of the president or a New York play showing the assassination of the president, we’re in a period where if people think this is going to be a neutral, professional investigation, I think they’re delusional.”
WATCH: @GStephanopoulos interviews @newtgingrich on Russia investigation and more: https://t.co/jM09ctIdno pic.twitter.com/8hL3bCiqsR— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 13, 2017
Gingrich was referencing a photo of comedian Kathy Griffin holding Trump’s severed head, and a New York theater company’s portrayal of Julius Caesar, which features a Trump lookalike who is stabbed to death.
Gingrich attributed his change of heart over Mueller and his investigation to former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week. During his testimony, Comey told senators he leaked the contents of a memo detailing a conversation he had with Trump to the New York Times in order to spark the appointment of a special counsel.
Comey’s plan ultimately worked, and the Justice Department tapped Mueller — a friend of Comey’s — to oversee the probe not long after the New York Times published its article.
“Things go on right now that are unthinkable,” Gingrich said. “I’m operating — it doesn’t seem to effect the news media — I’m operating in a world where someone can hold up the bleeding head of a president, someone can assassinate the president in a play, and people go oh, that’s just politics.”
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos noted that neither of those two instances have anything to do with Mueller, to which Gingrich said, “no, but they set the tone.”
