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US President Donald Trump has launched a fierce personal attack on former special counsel Robert Mueller, describing him as “totally conflicted”.
He said the man who led the inquiry into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election had “wanted to be the FBI director, and I said ‘no"”.
The president also claimed the two had had a “business dispute”.
On Wednesday, Mr Mueller reiterated that his inquiry did not exonerate Mr Trump of obstruction of justice.
Prominent US Democrats called for the impeachment of the Republican president following Mr Mueller’s comments.
At the White House on Thursday morning, Mr Trump said impeachment was a “dirty, filthy disgusting word”.
He said Mr Mueller was a “true Never Trumper”, referring to his Republican critics during the 2016 White House race, and that his investigation was “a giant presidential harassment”.
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As he prepared to board a helicopter to Colorado to address military graduates, Mr Trump said: “Mueller should have never been chosen.”
“He wanted the FBI job and didn’t get it and then was picked as special counsel,” he added.
He also referred to the special counsel’s team of investigators as “some of the worst human beings on Earth”.
Mr Trump also spoke of an unspecified “business dispute” between himself and Mr Mueller.
It was not clear what the president was referring to, but in 2011 Mr Mueller suspended his membership with a Trump-owned golf course in northern Virginia.
Afterwards, Mr Mueller requested to have his annual dues refunded but never heard back from the Trump Organization, according to a Washington Post report from last year.
In a tweet earlier on Thursday, Mr Trump seemed to say for the first time that Moscow had played a role in helping him to get elected, while disavowing his own involvement.
“Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax… And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected,” he wrote.
But on the White House lawn, he said: “No, Russia did not help me get elected. You know who got me elected? I got me elected. Russia didn’t help me at all.”
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What did Mueller say?
Mr Mueller held a press conference on Wednesday to make his first and only public comments in the two-year investigation.
The former FBI director said that charging a sitting president with a crime “is not an option” due to a long-standing US Department of Justice policy.
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mr Mueller declared in a live broadcast, contradicting Mr Trump’s claims of exoneration.
The special counsel’s 448-page report issued in April did not establish that Mr Trump conspired with Russia to sway the White House election, but listed 10 possible instances of obstruction of justice by the president.
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Trump assails "totally conflicted" Robert Mueller
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