Senator blasts GOP for not passing his bill to protect Mueller while Trump potentially obstructed justice

On Wednesday's edition of CNN's "New Day," Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) blasted Senate GOP leadership for sitting on his bipartisan legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller, in the wake of revelations that President Donald Trump potentially obstructed justice — and Attorney General William Barr tried to cover for it.

"If part of what Robert Mueller's report was supposed to do was clarify whether there was wrongdoing or misdeeds, there's 10 different instances detailed in Mueller's report that amount to attempts by the president to obstruct justice," Coons told host John Berman. "One that really stood out to me was two instances where he directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel. The only reason that didn't happen was Don McGahn refused to carry out that order."

"To me, for the many many months that I was trying to get a bill passed to protect the special counsel, and many Republicans said, 'there's no need to worry about that, Trump would never do something like that,' this is clear, hard evidence that Trump tried to do exactly that," said Coons. "And the only reason we're not sitting here talking about an obstruction prosecution is that Trump's own deputies, his White House counsel in this case, didn't carry out his directive."

"That's stunning," said Coons. "And John, that deserves some further discussion today."

Coons put forward one of multiple bills designed to make it harder for the president to fire the special counsel. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) killed it, claiming that there was no point — even though Trump was publicly attacking Mueller at the time.

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