WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Tuesday called the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election a "Phony Witch Hunt" run by "a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue."
Trump has criticized the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller before, but those were his first comments after prosecutors said Monday that his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, lied multiple times to prosecutors in violation of a plea agreement.
"The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other," Trump posted on Twitter. "Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue. The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won't be Mueller and his terrible Gang of Angry Democrats."
Trump suggested that the history of the Mueller team was disqualifying, urging people to "look at their past, and look where they come from."
"The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they've got nothing but ruined lives," he wrote. "Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and 'Justice' Department!"
Trump has mentioned the Democratic National Committee's server on Twitter 13 times this year, arguing that the FBI should have taken the committee's communication system in its investigation of Russian hacking. Then-FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the committee hired a private cybersecurity firm to review the system, and the firm shared its results with the FBI.
In an interview later Tuesday, Trump said he had "no intention" of stopping the investigation.
"The Mueller investigation is what it is. It just goes on and on and on," he told reporters in the Oval Office.
The president dismissed a question about whether he would commit to letting Mueller continue the investigation until its conclusion.
"This question has been asked about me now for almost two years," he said, at which point counselor Kellyanne Conway chimed in, "A thousand times."
Trump continued: "And, in the meantime, he's still there. He wouldn't have to be, but he's still there, so I have no intention of doing anything."
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday that he has no plans to bring to the floor a bill that would protect Mueller from being fired.
"This is a solution in search of a problem," McConnell said. "The president is not going to fire Robert Mueller."
ASSANGE-MANAFORT REPORT
A British newspaper reported Tuesday that Manafort secretly met WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London within weeks of being brought aboard Trump's presidential campaign. Lawyers for Assange and Manafort denounced the report as false.
If confirmed, the report would suggest a direct connection between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released tens of thousands of emails stolen by Russian spies during the 2016 election. The campaign seized on the emails to undermine Trump's rival, Hillary Clinton.
The Guardian, which did not identify the sources for its reporting, said that Manafort met with Assange "around March 2016" -- the same month that Russian hackers began trying to steal emails from the Clinton campaign.
In a statement, Manafort called the story "totally false and deliberately libelous" and said he was considering his legal options against The Guardian.
"I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him," Manafort said. "I have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter."
Assange's Ecuadorean lawyer, Carlos Poveda, said the report was false.
WikiLeaks said on Twitter that it was "willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange." It later tweeted that Assange had instructed his lawyers to sue The Guardian for libel.
The president on Tuesday declined to discuss on the record whether he would use presidential powers to help Manafort, or to discuss the Mueller team's accusation Monday that his former campaign chairman had breached his plea agreement by lying repeatedly to investigators.
"Let me go off the record because I don't want to get in the middle of the whole thing," Trump told reporters. He added later: "At some point, I'll talk on the record about it. But I'd rather not."
For months, the special counsel has also been scrutinizing the activities of Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Trump, to determine whether he coordinated with WikiLeaks or Assange in the release of hacked Democratic emails during the campaign.
A draft court filing prepared by Mueller's team and first reported by NBC News argues that conservative author Jerome Corsi alerted Stone in early August 2016 that WikiLeaks planned to release material damaging to Clinton.
Corsi emailed Stone about WikiLeaks' plans nearly 10 weeks before the group published hacked emails in October, according to the document, which was prepared as part of plea negotiations with Corsi that have collapsed.
"Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I'm back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging," Corsi wrote in the email quoted in the draft document, referring to Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012.
Stone, who has long denied coordinating with WikiLeaks, reiterated that denial Tuesday.
"None of the emails cited prove I had advance notice of the source or content of either allegedly hacked or allegedly stolen emails published by WikiLeaks," he wrote in a text message to The Washington Post. "When did political gossip become a criminal activity?"
GOLF CLUB MEMBERSHIP
Mueller's 18-month-old investigation has led to charges against 32 people, including 26 Russians. Four of Trump's former campaign advisers have pleaded guilty to various charges, most recently Manafort in September.
The other three are Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, who started serving his 14-day prison sentence Monday.
Trump has not spelled out why he considers Mueller to be "conflicted," but White House aides have said Mueller could hold a grudge with Trump over membership fees at Trump National Golf Club in northern Virginia.
Last year, two White House advisers told The Washington Post that Mueller had a dispute over the fees when he resigned as a club member in 2011. A spokesman for Mueller, who was FBI director at the time, said there was no dispute when Mueller left the club.
In the past, Trump has also noted that Mueller had served as FBI director under President Barack Obama.
Mueller, a registered Republican, was nominated to the post in 2001 by President George W. Bush. In 2011, Obama gave Mueller's original 10-year term a two-year extension.
Mueller was tapped to be special counsel last year by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Republican appointee in the Trump administration.
Information for this article was contributed by Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times; by Franklin Briceno and staff members of The Associated Press; and by John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez, Spencer Devlin Barrett, Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta, Rosalind S. Helderman, Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/28/2018