Mueller denies he ever asked to be Trump’s FBI chief

Former US special counsel Robert Mueller has said he’d never applied to President Donald Trump to be the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, contradicting earlier statements by Trump.

Speaking at a congressional hearing on his ‘Russiagate’ investigation report, Mueller said it was his “understanding” that he was not applying for the job of FBI director during an interview with Trump in 2017, a day before he was appointed to investigate the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia.

“My understanding of it was [I was] not applying for the job, I was asked to give my input on what it would take to do the job,” Mueller, who had been FBI head for 12 years up to 2013, told the House Judiciary Committee.

This contradicts Trump’s claim that he had turned down Mueller’s request to hold the post again. The US president first tweeted it in May, and recently reiterated during a press conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan that Mueller “wanted the job of FBI director and he didn’t get it.”

Mueller testified to Congress on Wednesday morning about the two-year investigation into alleged collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 US election race, which has been dubbed the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory. In the testimony, he reiterated the probe’s finding that no sufficient evidence of such collusion has been discovered.

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