An outgoing lawyer for President Trump’s personal legal team said that Trump approved of a statement he gave calling for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling to be shut down, The Wall Street Journal reports.
John Dowd, who resigned Thursday, issued a statement last weekend calling on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to “bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation.”
“[Trump] thought it was a good statement. And I still do,” Dowd told the Journal on Thursday.
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Dowd had initially told The Daily Beast, which first reported his statement, that he was making the comments in his capacity as Trump’s counsel. In a later statement provided to The Hill and other outlets, Dowd clarified that he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Hours after Dowd’s statement, Trump took to Twitter to echo his lawyer’s sentiment blasting the special counsel investigation into possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
“The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” Trump tweeted Saturday.
Dowd’s resignation on Thursday comes as the president seeks to shake up his legal team amid frustrations within the White House over Mueller’s probe.
This week, Trump added Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who has been highly critical of the FBI and Department of Justice, to his outside legal team.
With Dowd gone, Trump’s outside legal team handling the Russia matter will be led, at least in the interim, by diGenova and Jay Sekulow.
Trump indicated Thursday he would be willing to testify in the Mueller probe, something that Dowd reportedly advised the president against.