A Republican congressman is urging President Donald Trump to reconsider his approach in his attempts to persuade the American public that the Russia probe into his campaign's potential ties to Moscow is unnecessary. South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump needs to stop taking swipes at special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and let him do his job.
"When you are innocent … act like it," Gowdy said on Fox News Sunday after he was asked about Trump's repeated attacks on Mueller on Twitter. "If you've done nothing wrong, you should want the investigation to be as fulsome and thorough as possible."
Gowdy also advised Trump's attorney, John Dowd: "If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it." Dowd called over the weekend for Mueller's investigation to come to a close.
Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday that Mueller's team was made up of prosecutors who were "hardened Democrats." "The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime," Trump tweeted Saturday evening.
Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018
Mueller has aggressively pursued connections between Trump's inner circle and Russia's meddling into the 2016 presidential election. Most recently, Mueller has subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records, inching even closer to the president after bringing charges against several of his advisers.
The House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian interference concluded last week after lawmakers said they found no evidence linking Trump to the Kremlin, but Gowdy has raised questions about the committee's findings because lawmakers were unable to interview some witnesses because of where they stand in the Mueller probe, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
"You don't know what you don't know," he said, adding, "Within the universe of folks that we've interviewed, there is no collusion" between Trump associates and Russia.
Flynn has pleaded guilty to making false statements about his relationship with Russians to investigators, while Manafort was indicted on charges of conspiracy, money laundering and failure to disclose foreign assets, among others. In all, Mueller's team has indicted or secured guilty pleas from nearly two dozen people in the Russian probe, including four former Trump advisers, 13 Russian nationals and a London-based lawyer.
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Cristina Silva has written for the Associated Press, the Tampa Bay Times, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald, Salon, International Business ... Read more
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