Mueller to give first speech since taking on Russia probe

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller will speak publicly on Monday for the first time since becoming the special counsel leading the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race.

Mueller is scheduled to speak Monday afternoon at Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass., school spokeswoman Molly Horan told CNN Monday. 

Horan said that Mueller’s granddaughter is one of 133 graduates at Tabor, a small college preparatory school on the shores near Cape Cod.

{mosads}CNN reported that Mueller spent this Memorial Day in Massachusetts, where he once served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston under former U.S. attorney Bill Weld.

Weld would become Massachusetts’s GOP governor in the 1990s, before serving as Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson’s running mate last year.

Tabor announced Mueller as its graduation speaker on April 27, three weeks before the former FBI director became the Justice Department’s special counsel of the federal probe into Russia and possible ties to President Trump’s campaign. 

“Mr. Mueller oversaw the FBI during one of the most complex periods of our nation’s history and will no doubt share some unique perspectives with our graduates about leading in a position with such public and high-level responsibility,” head of school John Quirk said in a press release at the time. 

Trump earlier Monday said that he has “total confidence” in son-in-law Jared Kushner following reports that the senior White House adviser tried to establish backchannel communications with Russia during the presidential transition.

“[Kushner] is respected by virtually everyone and is working on programs that will save our country billions of dollars,” he said in a statement to The New York Times.

“In addition to that, and perhaps more importantly, he is a very good person,” Trump added of Kushner, who is married to his daughter Ivanka.