Trump Lawyer “Prays” for Shutdown of Mueller Probe

Oh, but John Dowd, the president’s personal attorney, was just ‘speaking for himself.’”

Alex Wong/Zuma

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On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump’s lawyer John Dowd told the Daily Beast he hoped Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, would end Bob Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia’s alleged interference with the 2016 presidential election.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd wrote in an emailed statement to the Daily Beast.

Trump and his lawyers have said for months that they are cooperating fully with the investigation. This is apparently the first time anyone from Trump’s legal team has publicly said the probe should be shut down.

Dowd told the Daily Beast that he was speaking on behalf of the president, but minutes later he walked that back, telling a source he was actually speaking on his own behalf.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, called Dowd’s call to end the Russia investigation a “flagrant abuse of power.”

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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