GOP, far-right media trying to discredit Mueller’s investigation

Conservative Republicans and far-right media outlets have stepped up their attacks to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and save US President Donald Trump from potential impeachment, according to reports.

They hope to sow enough doubt that if Mueller produces damning evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the public will be divided and the president can survive the fallout.

“Secret surveillance, wiretapping, intimidation, harassment and threats. It’s like the old KGB that comes for you in the dark of the night, banging through your door,” Fox News' top analyst Gregg Jarrett said this week.

Fox News host Sean Hannity replied, “This is not hyperbole you are using here.”

Conservative figures are also calling for Mueller to resign.

Mueller, a former FBI director, was appointed special counsel in May after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey, who was leading the investigation.

President Trump and his supporters have since launched a campaign to delegitimize the special counsel and his team, portraying the probe as a Democratic plot against the administration.

During a rally in Florida on Friday, Trump again slammed the US criminal justice system as "rigged," echoing comments he made last weekend after national security Michael Flynn pleaded guilty as part of the Russia inquiry.

PressTV-Ex-Trump aide pleads guilty to lying about Russia links

US President Donald Trump's former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia.

"So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday 'interrogation' with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times," Trump tweeted last Saturday. "And nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?"

Meanwhile, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, urged FBI Director Chris Wray during a hearing on Thursday to "repair the damage done by" Comey.

Goodlatte also questioned "the magnitude of insider bias" that exists on Mueller’s team.

Former FBI agents, speaking to Business Insider, have characterized the outcry as "nonsense." 

“It’s the only way he’s going to get out of this: by trying to make the investigation seem partisan,” said Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund in Washington, according to The Guardian.

“It’s the only strategy now: make sure his base is with him and Republicans in Congress won’t hold him accountable,” he added.

PressTV-'Senate mulls Trump’s obstruction of justice case'

Senator Dianne Feinstein says a case for obstruction of justice is coming together against President Trump as part of the Russia inquiry.

The efforts to delegitimize the counsel come as some Democratic senators have floated the idea of building an obstruction-of-justice case against Trump.

“What we’re beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said last Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

The calls for impeachment grew louder after Trump tweeted that he fired Flynn as national security adviser in February “because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI” about his contacts with the Russian ambassador late last year.

The tweet came a day after Flynn’s pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, meaning that Trump knew Flynn had committed a serious crime but pressured former Comey not to investigate him.

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