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 things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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