Without Evidence, Trump Accuses NBC’s Lester Holt of “Fudging” Interview

He also appeared to admit that he has indeed considered firing both Mueller and Sessions.

Ron Sachs/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump on Thursday accused NBC’s Lester Holt of “fudging the tape” of the May 2017 interview during which the president admitted he planned to fire former FBI director James Comey regardless of the Justice Department’s recommendation, directly contradicting the White House’s initial statements.

That extraordinary admission, along with the president’s disclosure to Holt that the “Russia thing” had been on his mind before firing Comey, has reportedly been at the center of the special counsel’s investigation into whether Trump has attempted to obstruct justice.

The president did not offer any evidence to back any allegation of the tape being manipulated. He instead sought to remind the public that he was “not under investigation.”

In something of a follow-up to his Wednesday tweet announcing the forthcoming departure of White House counsel Don McGahn, Trump denied reports that McGahn had persuaded him not to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But the president’s tweet, which misspelled the word “counsel,” appeared to confirm that he has contemplated those firings, either one of which would be certain to kick off a political crisis.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1035138155794575360

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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