LATEST NEWS

Getty/Alex Wong

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Tuesday slammed Donald Trump’s “perverse” attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, noting the president is blatantly interfering in a probe of which he’s the subject.

Discussing Trump’s bogus claim that former president Barack Obama installed a “spy” in the Trump campaign, Toobin remarked there is “No evidence” of the president’s remark, “but there is evidence that the FBI used a confidential informant in the investigation of the Trump campaign during 2016.”

“What makes this such a perverse situation is that the president is not just interfering in any old investigation, which he shouldn't do in the first place, which is a violation of norms that have been honored for decades,” Toobin said. “But he's interfering in an investigation of him. He's a subject of this investigation, so the idea that he is doing this is really outrageous and you can see the FBI and the Justice Department trying to accommodate him but in a way that somehow preserves the investigation. It's unclear to me whether they'll be able to thread that needle.”

Toobin noted the “spy” narrative is “ust the latest false charge against the FBI.”

“The other false charge was that the whole investigation was due to the [Christopher] Steele dossier, was due to the British private investigator’s report that was commissioned eventually by the Clinton campaign,” Toobin said.

“This is all about attacking the investigation, regardless of the facts,” he continued. “The Steele dossier wasn't the start of this. There wasn't a spy planted in the Trump campaign. All of these accusations are false, but they do accomplish the goal of stirring the pot for people who are ill disposed toward the Democrats any way.”

Toobin said Trump wants to make the Mueller investigation a “political issue.”

“His whole presidency, whether it's in terms of policy or politics, has been about mobilizing and satisfying his base and that's what he's done with regard to Mueller and attacking Mueller publicly and attacking the FBI are means to that end,” Toobin said.

Top Trending

Check out what's trending in the news right now.

from Salon https://ift.tt/2Lwfg4H