In an insane rant that was aired on live television for more than 20 minutes Thursday afternoon President Donald Trump covered a wide variety of topics, including the Mueller report.
At one point the President claimed now-former Special Counsel Robert Mueller “is in love with James Comey,” Trump’s former FBI Director he fired over the Russia investigation.
“They come up with a report, and Bob Mueller’s no friend of mine,” Trump told reporters. “I had conflicts with him. We had a business dispute, we had, uh, somebody that is in love with James Comey, we like James Comey they were very good friends, supposedly best friends, maybe not, supposedly best friends, you look at the picture file, and, you see hundreds of pictures of him and Comey.”
Mueller’s “business dispute” with Trump?
From the Mueller report:
In October 2011, Mueller resigned his family’s membership from Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, in a letter that noted that “we live in the District and find that we are unable to make full use of the Club” and that inquired “whether we would be entitled to a refund of a portion of our initial membership fee,” which was paid in 1994.
“The Muellers,” Golf Digest reports, “would write several letters asking for a refund, one to Trump himself, but the refund never came.”
That’s the “business dispute” Trump repeatedly has referred to.
As far as the claim Mueller and Comey are “in love,” that’s presumably false as well.
“It’s unclear what Trump’s referring to,” Talking Points Memo notes, referring to the picture file Trump claimed exists. “Pictures of Mueller and Comey certainly exist, but that’s hardly surprising given that Mueller was Comey’s predecessor as FBI director.”
I’s not the first time Trump has lied about the supposed Comey-Mueller friendship, which he tries to suggest is a very intimate one.
New York Magazine in September of 2018 documented another time Trump made the apparently false claim:
“And he’s Comey’s best friend. And I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other. You know, he’s Comey’s best friend.”