President Donald Trump began Tuesday morning early with a tweet lashing out at the leaked 49 questions Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to ask him. But as usual, Trump got all the facts wrong.
“So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were ‘leaked’ to the media,” he tweeted at 6:47 AM. “No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!”
He followed up with another attack, clearly out of anger and frustration, just after 7:30 AM:
First, it is widely believed that the questions were not leaked by the Mueller team – which has never leaked anything – but by someone close to the White House legal team. The New York Times, which broke the story by obtaining and first publishing the questions, says they did not come from the White House legal team.
The Times’ Michael Schmidt, in an MSNBC interview Monday night, strongly suggested the leak came from Trump’s team.
As far as Trump’s claim there were no questions on collusion, that’s false; there was at least one: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?”
Trump is also wrong that the investigation began with illegally leaked classified information.
“The hacking [of the DNC] and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign [George Papadopoulos] may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” The New York Times reported in December.
Trump is also wrong that it is “very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened.” As long as he attempts to thwart the investigation, it does not matter if there was ever a crime to begin with. Obstruction of justice can occur absent a crime.