President Trump’s fiery tweets are not helping him prove he’s innocent amid an ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, former CIA Director John Brennan said Monday.
Trump sent out a flurry of tweets early Monday, claiming he has the power to pardon himself — though he says he’s done nothing wrong — and called special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation “unconstitutional.”
“I think it just shows how worried is he, how fearful he is about what the special counsel is uncovering. And his tweets are not the tweets of an innocent individual,” Brennan told “MSNBC Live” with Hallie Jackson.
[Related: Chris Christie: Trump will be impeached if he pardons himself]
Trump spent Saturday morning on Twitter criticizing Brennan and the Russia investigation. Trump and Brennan have been in a war of words in recent months, with Trump accusing the former spy chief of being a “liar” and the latter saying he feels compelled to speak out against Trump because “he is an abnormal president.”
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani asserted Sunday that the president has constitutional powers to pardon himself, but said Trump has “no intention” of pardoning himself because such a move could lead to his immediate impeachment.
“The constitutional powers granted to the president for pardon are quite broad,” Brennan said. “It doesn’t exclude explicitly the president’s pardoning of himself. But I think common sense would indicate that the founding fathers did not want the president of the United States to pardon himself for some type of misdemeanors, high crimes or whatever.”
