REUTERS/Leah Millis
U.S. President Donald Trump announces a presidential proclamation placing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 8, 2018.
- Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested that if President Donald Trump fires the special counsel Robert Mueller, he could risk being impeached.
- Graham distinguished Mueller's probe from other controversial events at the Justice Department and the FBI that the president has used as evidence that the Mueller team is partisan.
- Trump's lawyer spoke about ending the Mueller investigation over the weekend.
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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday that if President Donald Trump moves to fire the special counsel Robert Mueller, it would "probably" be an impeachable offense and would precipitate a "constitutional crisis."
Graham, who has vacillated between being one of Trump's fiercest Republican critics and one of his most loyal defenders, told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that if the president fired Mueller without cause, it would likely suggest the president has ulterior motives.
"Well, I think what the president will have done is stopped an investigation in whether or not his campaign colluded with the Russians, what effect the Russians had on the 2016 campaign," Graham told Hewitt. "I can't see it being anything other than a corrupt purpose."
"I can't think of a more upsetting moment in the rule of law to have an investigator looking at a president's campaign as to whether or not they colluded with a foreign government, what kind of crimes may have been committed," Graham said. "I've seen no evidence of collusion, but to stop investigation without cause, I think, would be a Constitutional crisis."
Graham seemed to echo other lawmakers like Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who used similar language over the weekend.
"If the president reaches out and stops this investigation, that is a constitutional crisis in this country," he told Fox
Mueller's probe is separate from DOJ abuse, Graham says
Graham went on to defend Trump's point of view on alleged partisan misconduct at the Department of Justice and his firing of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe over the weekend. But he distinguished these events from the Mueller investigation.
Thomson Reuters FILE PHOTO - FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe speaks during a news conference announcing the takedown of the dark web marketplace AlphaBay, at the Justice Department in Washington
McCabe was forced to step down from his FBI post earlier this year amid an internal investigation by the Office of the Inspector General into his approval of unauthorized disclosures to the media in October 2016 related to the bureau's investigation of former 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
The Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, reportedly said McCabe was not forthcoming during the OIG review. The FBI Office of Professional Responsibility subsequently recommended that Attorney General Jeff Sessions terminate McCabe, according to The New York Times.
Trump's concern about the Justice Department stems largely from claims Rep. Devin Nunes made in a controversial memo released last month. The memo alleged that the Justice Department and FBI had improperly used the largely uncorroborated Russia dossier in order to obtain a surveillance warrant against a former Trump campaign associate. Democrats have claimed that the dossier was but one piece of the evidence presented.
But Graham said the events around the DOJ surveillance warrant took place well before Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017.
"They're disconnected in time," Graham said on Sunday. "Mueller came along long after this. He's looking at things unrelated to the dossier. And we're a rule of law nation."
Trump's musings about firing Mueller have come under renewed scrutiny after one of his lawyers said last weekend that the probe should end. Although the lawyer qualified his statement by saying he was not speaking on behalf of the president, Trump himself tweeted on Saturday that the probe "should never have been started in the first place."