Trump’s former attorney BLASTS Russia probe, explains why he LOST “all respect” for Rosenstein

Trump’s chief personal attorney who resigned in early 2018 gave ABC News an earful about the Russia probe, saying he believes it is a waste of time and there won’t even be a report from Mueller:

ABC NEWS – The veteran criminal defense attorney who headed President Donald Trump’s legal team during a crucial stretch of the special counsel investigation believes the entire affair will end in silence from special counsel Robert Mueller, and called the massive two-year probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign “a terrible waste of time.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a report,” John Dowd told ABC News in a wide-ranging interview for the premiere episode of “The Investigation,” a new podcast focused on the probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller. “I will be shocked if anything regarding the president is made public, other than ‘We’re done.’”

“I know exactly what [Mueller] has,” Dowd said. “I know exactly what every witness said, what every document said. I know exactly what he asked. And I know what the conclusion or the result is,” he said, describing the sweeping efforts by Trump’s legal team to assess the case by speaking to dozens of witnesses. Based on that knowledge, Dowd said, “there’s no basis. There’s no exposure. It’s been a terrible waste of time.”

Dowd’s overall view of the investigation — he called it “one of the greatest frauds this country’s ever seen” — echoes Trump’s claim that it is a hoax or a witch hunt.

Dowd explains why he didn’t want Trump to be interviewed by Mueller:

But a deeper concern, he said, was that prosecutors might try to set perjury traps for the president – a pattern he maintained was on display in the indictments that Mueller’s team was filing earlier in the investigation – cases brought against Trump advisors for lying to investigators.

Dowd described those indictments as “What I call nickel-dime process crimes. I ran a strike force. I ran big corruption cases. I didn’t go around, picking scabs and just making any case I could make. If there was a petty case, I shifted it to someone else. I didn’t do it. And that’s where I disagree with Bob.”

Dowd said he did not believe Trump would intentionally lie to the Mueller team, but that he would lose track of key details in the swirl of a massive amount of material he had to digest as president every day.

“In my questioning him or talking to him, you know, first question, easy. Second question, easy. Third question, he wasn’t sure. And he doesn’t like being unsure. So he’ll guess,” Dowd said. “There’s your trap, right there. It’s not whether he lies or not… It’s not a matter of integrity. It’s overload.”

That sounds just like Trump. LOL! I’m very glad Trump never went through with that interview…

Dowd also expressed frustration with how Rosenstein was overseeing Mueller:

Dowd suggested during the interview that he channeled the frustration the president has displayed for months about the probe, and those running it. He believes it should have ended last year, and he was surprised that Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein instead allowed it to mushroom.

“If I was supervising Mueller, [I would] tell him to ‘knock it off, get it done,” Dowd said.

“Your job is to find out if there’s collusion or there was obstruction,” he said. “And the answer’s ‘no,’ so let’s get on with it.”

And he lost all respect for Rosenstein when he refused to even consider investigating Comey…

Dowd said that at one point after Comey appeared before Congress, he wrote to Rosenstein to ask for the Justice Department to investigate whether the former FBI director lied in his testimony.

“He blew me off,” Dowd said. “That’s not leadership. That’s not accountability. … We did it in writing. We did it politely. We did it confidentially. And he just blew us off. So, I lost all respect for Rod Rosenstein.”

I don’t know how dead on Dowd will be with his predictions, but I don’t think anyone expects Mueller’s investigation to implicate Trump on anything. After all the bipartisan Senate Intel Committee keeps telling us that they’ve found zero evidence of collusion.


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