WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today joined CNN New Day to discuss the latest in the Mueller investigation. 

“Let me just remind you and our viewers that the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, is a lifelong Republican, nominated to be FBI director by a Republican President, unanimously confirmed by the Senate and that the person supervising him, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, lifetime Republican, and FBI Director Chris Wray, Republican, are both Trump nominees. I don't see how he can credibly claim corruption in the FBI and that he is being framed by federal law enforcement. President Trump ran as a pro law enforcement candidate. And I think his continued baseless attacks on law enforcement and the FBI are frankly very unhelpful. If the President is innocent, he should act like it and stop these attacks on the special counsel,” said Senator Coons.

Full video and audio available here.

Excerpts from the interview below:

Sen. Coons on Rep. Trey Gowdy: I'm grateful that Congressman Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, stepped forward and made this important statement. He certainly demonstrated some partisan leanings in the past when he helped run the Benghazi hearings, he was an aggressive partisan against then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In this matter, he is stepping forward and putting to rest the baseless allegations by President Trump. I’ll remind you, unfortunately, our President has a long history of rolling out baseless accusations and conspiracy theories from his role before he was President in arguing that President Obama was not an American to his claim right after the campaign that "3 million illegals" had voted without any proof or evidence to his claim that President Obama had tapped his phone in Trump Tower without any evidence. Frankly, this undermines the United States around the world. It suggests we have a national leader who traffics in conspiracy theories. I'm frankly grateful to Congressman Gowdy that he has stepped forward and made such a clear and forceful statement. 

Sen. Coons on whether this will prevent the President from bringing this up again:No. Unfortunately, the President was right back at it claiming, without foundation, that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is going to meddle in the 2018 elections. He just made that accusation on Twitter recently. He continues to claim that the special counsel investigation is a quote, unquote ‘rigged witch hunt.’ So, I don't think this will slow him down at all. Let me just remind you and your viewers that the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, is a lifelong Republican, nominated to be FBI director by a Republican President, unanimously confirmed by the Senate and that the person supervising him, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, lifetime Republican, and FBI Director Chris Wray, Republican, are both Trump nominees. I don't see how he can credibly claim corruption in the FBI and that he is being framed by federal law enforcement. President Trump ran as a pro law enforcement candidate. And I think his continued baseless attacks on law enforcement and the FBI are frankly very unhelpful. If the President is innocent, he should act like it and stop these attacks on the special counsel.

More on Mueller: Yes. It is long standing Department of Justice policy to not make major announcements around investigations in a way that might influence an election. There was widespread and bipartisan concern expressed about Director Comey's timing of his announcements about reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mails just days before the 2016 general election. I'm confident Special Counsel Mueller will be very aware of and follow that longstanding Department of the Justice policy. 

Sen. Coons on Sen. Grassley’s response: I respect the Chairman. I appreciate that he recently gave a markup to my bipartisan bill with Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Tillis, and Senator Booker. We got a markup of a bill that would protect the special counsel from being abruptly fired. Chairman Grassley supported that bill, so I'm grateful for his bipartisanship on that. On this matter, I think in just reviewing these transcripts, which were publicly released by Chairman Grassley, there is obvious tension with a recent report by the New York Times that Donald Trump Jr. met with representatives of two gulf nations who were offering to assist his father win the general election in 2016. So, there might be an innocuous explanation. We won't know if we don’t have him back in the committee to answer questions. 

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