Jake Tapper on Monday tore into Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade against special counsel Robert Mueller, coupled with his decision to hire a lawyer who pushed the theory the Russia probe is a plot to frame the president, in a searing monologue on CNN’s “The Lead.”
Tapper was reporting on news Trump hired Washington attorney Joseph diGenova, who went on Fox News in January to declare the special counsel investigation “a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.”
“Trump’s brand new lawyer wants you to know that the FBI and Justice Department tied to frame President Trump on a phony crime,” Tapper said Monday. “Sure, why not?”
Tapper explained Trump is “signaling” an “even more aggressive” response in his defense against the Russia investigation, “hiring a lawyer this afternoon who is openly claiming that the FBI and justice department are trying to frame the president.”
“It is all of a piece, with President Trump claiming earlier that the Russia investigation is a total witch hunt with massive conflicts of interest,” Tapper continued. “Just the latest in President Trump's now three-day long Twitter rant alternating between boasting about former FBI deputy director Andre McCabe being fired and fuming about the special counsel’s Russia investigation in which the president named Mueller for the first time and complained about the need for an investigation at all.”
Tapper noted the Russia investigation is “empirically hardly a witch hunt, having wielded charges against 19 people and three companies so far, including five guilty pleas” which “includes four Trump associates.”
The CNN host added Trump’s rage rampage comes after Mueller reportedly “submitted questions for the president to Trump's legal team.”
“And it is all prompted concerns among members of the president's own party they might be looking to fire Mueller,” Tapper said.
“With the president's inner circle of level-headed voices shrinking, seemingly by the hour, and President Trump's temperature clearly rising, a new week dawning, we are all wondering if this might be the week president crosses that massive red line and orders the firing of the special counsel, Robert Mueller,” he added.
Watch below, via CNN:
