President Trump on Tuesday denied that he instructed Attorney General William Barr to assign a federal prosecutor to examine the origins of the federal Russia investigation.
“No, I didn’t ask him to do it. I didn’t know it,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “I didn’t know it, but I think it’s a great thing that he did it. I saw it last night, and they want to look at how that whole hoax got started. It was a hoax. I am so proud of our attorney general that he is looking into it. I think it’s great. I did not know about it, no.”
The New York Times reported Monday evening that U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut was tapped to head an investigation examining the genesis of the Russia investigation. There are two other known federal investigation dedicated to uncovering details of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Barr has raised doubts about whether the Justice Department behaved appropriately during the federal Russia investigation and has said he believes “spying did occur.” However, he said he needed to look into whether the spying was “adequately predicated.”
Trump has urged to “investigate the investigators” after special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation wrapped up. The report concluded that members of the Trump campaign did not collude with the Kremlin in a criminal manner, but it made no determination on obstruction of justice.
Barr has since said that there is not sufficient evidence to prove that Trump committed an obstruction crime, but Democrats in Congress want to investigate further.
