{"id":58027,"date":"2018-02-05T05:04:58","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T05:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=58027"},"modified":"2018-02-05T05:04:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T05:04:58","slug":"reince-priebus-disputes-report-that-trump-tried-to-fire-robert-mueller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/reince-priebus-disputes-report-that-trump-tried-to-fire-robert-mueller.html","title":{"rendered":"Reince Priebus disputes report that Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reince Priebus disputes report that Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday disputed reports that President Donald Trump sought to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the things that we went through in the West Wing, I never felt that the president was going to fire the special counsel,\u201d Priebus said on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet The Press,\u201d during his first interview since his last day working at the White House last summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The New York Times recently reported Trump ordered the firing of Mueller in June, and backed down only when White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign. The Washington Post later reported that Priebus, along with then-White House strategist Steve Bannon, grew increasingly concerned back in June that Trump would fire Mueller, and tried to get others to intervene with Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would know the difference between a level-10 situation as reported in that story and what was reality, and to me that wasn\u2019t reality,” Priebus said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was very clear by the president\u2019s own words that he was concerned about the conflicts of interest that he felt that the special counsel had and that he made that very clear,” Priebus said. “Perhaps someone interpreted that to mean something else but I know the difference between, \u2018Fire that person, why isn\u2019t that person gone?\u2019 to what I read.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The former chief of staff also defended Trump from allegations that he has obstructed justice, saying he \u201cnever felt that there was some sort of collusion or some kind of obstruction situation going on in the West Wing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Priebus resisted speaking about some of the issues around former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying, \u201cI can\u2019t really get into all of that because you know all of that is classified.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But he did assert that Flynn misled him about the nature of his conversation with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Dec. 29, 2016, a few weeks before Trump was sworn into office, Flynn spoke with Kislyak about sanctions administered by the Obama administration \u2014 something Priebus said Flynn “denied over and over and over again.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, certainly, it was something he always denied right until the end,\u201d Priebus said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The White House has said Flynn was ultimately fired because he misled Vice President Mike Pence about whether sanctions were included in their discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Sunday, Priebus raised the possibility that Flynn could have possibly even kept his job if he hadn’t repeatedly misled the administration. “We never got to that matrix,” Priebus said. “It didn’t necessarily have to get to the point of 12 denials.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Priebus on Sunday also defended his own explanation of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and several Russians after Trump Jr. was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton.<\/span><\/p>\n

In July, before emails from Trump Jr. revealed how the meeting was set up, Priebus told Fox News, \u201cIt was a meeting apparently about Russian adoption and after about 20 minutes, the meeting ended and that was the end of it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Priebus stood by his answer on Sunday, reiterating that he felt those involved didn\u2019t think much about the meeting and that they believed it was \u201ctruly about these issues of Russian adoption.\u201d He claimed that the adoption premise is what he \u201calways heard\u201d and that it came from \u201cmembers of the family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As communications between Russians and associates of Trump receive increased scrutiny by Mueller and numerous congressional committees conducting their own investigations, Priebus defended his overall tenure while serving at the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI never felt that I was involved in something nefarious,” he said, “the whole way through, from the beginning to the end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/white-house\/reince-priebus-disputes-report-trump-tried-fire-robert-mueller-n844516<\/span><\/p>\n

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