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The U.S. president said the special counsel should be fired over conflict of interest but then backed off after his White House counsel threatened to quit.
U.S. President Donald Trump last June ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller fired but backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than follow his directive, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing four people told of the matter.
Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, learned of the incident in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in an inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice, the Times reported.
Amid media reports that Mueller was looking into a possible obstruction case, Trump argued that the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the probe, two of the people said, according to the Times report.
First, Trump said that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, had led Mueller to resign his membership, the newspaper reported.
The president also said Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for a law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Trump also said Mueller had been interviewed to return as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation the day before he was appointed special counsel in May, the Times reported, citing the two people.
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