Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned President Trump Monday night against firing special counsel Robert Mueller after FBI agents raided the office of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, at the special counsel’s request.
Soon after Trump railed against the raid — calling it a “disgraceful situation” and mentioning “many people” have told him to fire the special counsel— Schumer warned him against making such a decision.
“If the president is thinking of using this raid to fire Special Counsel Mueller or otherwise interfere with the chain of command in the Russia probe, we Democrats have one simple message for him: don’t,” Schumer said in a statement fired off shortly after Trump’s comments.
“Special Counsel Mueller, a Republican, has uncovered a deep and detailed pattern of Russian interference in our elections that has led to indictments and guilty pleas,” Schumer said. “It has also led to the Trump administration itself leveling sanctions against Russian individuals for meddling in our elections, proof that it’s not a so-called ‘witch-hunt.’”
“The investigation is critical to the health of our democracy, and must be allowed to continue,” he added.
For the better part of 10 minutes, while flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and John Bolton, the newly minted national security adviser, Trump rattled on over the FBI’s raid of Cohen’s office.
“When I saw this, when I heard about it, that is a whole new level of unfairness,” Trump said.
“This is the most biased group of people,” Trump said of Mueller’s team. “These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I have ever seen. Democrats — all. Either Democrats or a couple of Republicans who worked for President Obama. They’re not looking at the other side — Hillary Clinton … all of the crimes that were committed, all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about from the Republican side and the independent side. They only keep looking at us. “
