President Donald Trump in a recent telephone call pressured the prime minister of Australia to work with Attorney General Bill Bar to try to discredit the Mueller investigation.
Just as it did with the still unreleased word-for-word actual transcript of Trump’s call with the Ukraine president, the White House “restricted access to the call’s transcript to a small group of the president’s aides,” The New York Times reports, calling it “an unusual decision that is similar to the handling of a July call with the Ukrainian president that is at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump.”
The Times notes that “the discussion with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia shows the extent to which Mr. Trump sees the attorney general as a critical partner in his goal to show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt and partisan origins, and the extent that Mr. Trump sees the Justice Department inquiry as a potential way to gain leverage over America’s closest allies.”
The Mueller report, to be clear, did not have corrupt or partisan origins.
The paper adds that “the discussion with Mr. Morrison shows the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests.”
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Image by The White House via Flickr