'It would be a disaster': Experts and lawmakers say firing Mueller would be 'insane even by Trump-era standards'
"He's weighing that option," said Chris Ruddy, Newsmax CEO and friend of Trump on PBS NewsHour Monday evening.
Ruddy was seen leaving the West Wing on Monday, but White House press secretary Sean Spicer later said Ruddy had not spoken with Trump about the issue while he was at the White House.
Trump's reported consideration of firing Mueller comes just weeks after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him to lead the FBI's probe into Russia's election interference and whether any Trump campaign associates colluded with Moscow.
Legal experts, members of Congress, former government officials, and even Ruddy reacted swiftly on Monday night, most with the same message: Don't do it.
"I personally think it would be a very significant mistake - even though I don't think there's a justification ... for a special counsel in this case," Ruddy said.
"Firing Bob Mueller as special counsel would be an order of magnitude more seismic than firing Jim Comey," said Andrew Wright, a professor of constitutional law at Savannah Law School. "It would be insane even by Trump-era standards."
"It would be a disaster," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Politico. "There's no reason to fire Mueller. What's he done to be fired?"
"If President fired Bob Mueller, Congress would immediately re-establish independent counsel and appoint Bob Mueller. Don't waste our time," said Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
And Richard Painter, the top White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said Trump's consideration "had better be fake news or this presidency will be over very soon."
Ruddy's comments came amid a drumbeat of calls from Trump's supporters and conservative allies for Mueller to step down - despite their initial support for him. It followed former FBI Director James Comey's testimony last week that he ordered a friend, a Columbia Law professor, to give the press a memo detailing Comey's detailing of Trump's request that the FBI drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The calls also come as Mueller has been staffing up with top attorneys specializing in criminal law and fraud.
"Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair," former House Speaker and prominent Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich tweeted Monday. "Look who he is hiring. Check FEC reports. Time to rethink."
Gingrich told CBS on Tuesday morning that Trump called him Monday night to discuss Gingrich's feeling that Mueller has been playing "a rigged game."
'It's chaos that he can put to bed'
It is not clear that Trump could fire Mueller unilaterally and without good reason, however.
"As I understand it, the special counsel regulations require termination only 'for cause,'" Wright said. "The president would have to convince Rosenstein that there are grounds for termination. If Rosenstein refused, Trump would have to fire Rosenstein. Sound familiar? It would be Saturday Night Massacre city."
The Saturday Night Massacre refers to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus on October 20, 1973, after they refused to follow President Richard Nixon's orders and fire the special prosecutor investigating Watergate, Archibald Cox.
"If Rosenstein did remove Mueller, then the investigation would revert to Rosenstein on the org chart," Wright said. "But the political, congressional, and media environment would be just white hot crazy.'"
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that he can't understand why Trump doesn't just put the speculation to rest.
"He is unnecessarily allowing it to fester, and that is creating more chaos around the Russia investigation," Swalwell said on Tuesday. "It's chaos that he can put to bed by just saying that he does not intend to fire the special counsel."
Swalwell added that Trump seems to have turned questions surrounding the Russia probe into "a guessing game," beginning with his unfounded claim in early March that President Barack Obama "wire tapped" Trump Tower phones. Last month, he suggested in a tweet that there may be "tapes" of his conversations with Comey.
"This is all beginning to look intentional," Swalwell said. "It seems that he could answer many of the serious questions out there, but instead he's turned this into a guessing game. The cost of this chaos is that he has brought Washington to a halt at a time that both parties would be better served working on the issues they were elected to address."
When it comes to examining whether Trump sought to obstruct the FBI's investigation into Russia's election interference and whether the Trump campaign played a role, the president's pattern of behavior and past statements about the probe will likely come back to haunt him, experts say.
"You may be the first president in history to go down because you can't stop inappropriately talking about an investigation that, if you just were quiet, would clear you," Graham said Sunday of Trump.
Bob Bauer, who was a White House counsel under President Barack Obama, wrote last month that "what is most remarkable is that the president has willingly created this self-portrait."
"As scandals in the making go, this one may become famous for featuring the president as the principal witness against himself: he seems committed to uncovering any cover-up," Bauer said.