US President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to launch another scathing attack on the New York Times and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, calling it “McCarthyism at its WORST.”
The weekend Twitter ire of the president was prompted by the publication of a New York Times piece on White House lawyer Donald McGahn’s extensive cooperation in Mueller’s investigation based on sources. The president immediately reacted Saturday evening, saying that it was he who allowed McGahn and others to be interviewed and ordered “millions” of pages of documents to be provided.
On Sunday morning, he continued sharing his thoughts on the article and tweeted that White House lawyer Don McGahn isn’t “a John Dean type ‘RAT,’” adding that the story was “Fake News,” and claimed that some in the media have apologized to him over it.
John Dean was White House counsel for Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Dean ultimately cooperated with prosecutors and helped bring the Nixon presidency to its knees. In the string of tweets on Sunday morning, Trump claimed he allowed McGahn and others to testify, stating that he “didn’t have to [let them]. I have nothing to hide......”
Trump then went on to dub Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation as “McCarthyism at its WORST,” referring to tactics used by late Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the 1950s, McCarthy claimed that communist and Soviet spies had infiltrated the government, going on to accuse some – without evidence – of treason.
The president’s Sunday Twitter rant came a day after Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, suggested that Mueller’s leaking information to the New York Times about McGahn’s 30 hours’ worth of voluntary interviews was meant to push the president into testifying.
“I think the best analysis would be that the Mueller team is panicking, they know they don’t have a case, there was no collusion, there was no obstruction, they can’t prove it, and they are trying to get the president to testify,” Giuliani said on Fox’s ‘Justice with Judge Jeanine’ program. “And they’re hoping that if they put out a story like this in which they suggest that McGahn is cooperating against him—but don’t say it, they don’t say that—that he’ll want to come in and explain himself,” he said.
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