Lindsey Graham On Trump Ordering Mueller Firing: ‘I Don’t Care’
As The Inquisitr detailed, Senator Lindsey Graham had no qualms about using the impeachment process when it came to President Bill Clinton, but the South Carolina Republican seems to have more lax standards when it comes to President Donald Trump, as The Hill reports. Graham is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As such, he was recently discussing his opinions following the release of a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
His remarks came as part of an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, in which the show’s host, Margaret Brennan, pointed out that according to the special counsel’s report, Trump ordered former White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller in 2017.
“I don’t care what they talked about. He didn’t do anything. The point is the president did not impede Mueller from doing his investigation,” Graham said during his appearance Sunday. “I don’t care what happened between him and Don McGahn. Here’s what I care about: Was Mueller allowed to do his job? And the answer is yes.”
According to Mueller’s report, which was made public earlier this month, Trump ordered McGahn to fire Mueller, but McGahn refused, allegedly citing what he described as another “Saturday Night Massacre” reminiscent of a similar purge precipitated by then-president Richard Nixon in the midst of the Watergate scandal. Nixon saw the removal of two top Department of Justice officials who refused to participate in his request that independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox be fired in a manner similar to what Trump evidently hoped for Mueller. It was ultimately the third in command, Solicitor General Robert Bork, who acquiesced in the case of Nixon and Cox.
Sen. Lindsey Graham says Trump, unlike Bill Clinton, "did nothing wrong" to warrant impeachment https://t.co/M5PLTIc5EL pic.twitter.com/SzAxN5WgPx
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 28, 2019
Nonetheless, Trump has maintained that no such exchange took place between himself and McGahn, going as far as to indicate that he could, in fact, have simply fired Mueller himself without the need for such an intermediary.
“As has been incorrectly reported by the Fake News Media, I never told then White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller, even though I had the legal right to do so,” Trump tweeted in a message posted in the early hours on Thursday. “If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself.”
The exchange between McGahn and Trump represents just one of numerous occasions in which Mueller has identified potential obstruction of justice by the president.
