WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump on Monday questioned whether it was “highly illegal” for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat to joke about revealing information from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Politico reported that Sen. Mark Warner joked at a recent dinner at his Martha’s Vineyard home that if he was given another glass of wine, “I’ll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know.” Warner also predicted a “wild couple of months ahead.”
Trump tweeted: “Why is Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), perhaps in a near drunken state, claiming he has information that only he and Bob Mueller, the leader of the 13 Angry Democrats on a Witch Hunt, knows? Isn’t this highly illegal. Is it being investigated?”
Warner said earlier Monday that it was a “bad joke.”
Also on Monday, the president said a congressional hearing for an FBI agent removed from Mueller’s team over anti-Trump tweets should be shown to the public.
Peter Strzok was scheduled to talk to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday behind closed doors. The panel subpoenaed him after an internal report from the Justice Department revealed new anti-Trump texts between Strzok and his colleague Lisa Page. Both Strzok and Page worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Trump tweeted, “The hearing of Peter Strzok and the other hating frauds at the FBI & DOJ should be shown to the public on live television, not a closed door hearing that nobody will see. We should expose these people for what they are - there should be total transparency!”
Strzok and Page also worked on Mueller’s team for a period last year. Strzok, a seasoned counterintelligence investigator, was reassigned from the special counsel team after the derogatory text messages were discovered during an inspector general review of the Clinton email investigation and brought to Mueller’s attention. Page had already left the team.
Strzok was recently escorted from the FBI building as his disciplinary process winds through the system, his lawyer has said.
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