Top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff, is calling on Congress to “unite to stop” President Donald Trump if he tries to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or special counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller is investigating Russian interference in U.S. elections and possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign. Trump confirmed in a tweet Friday he was under investigation and appeared to take aim at Rosenstein, calling the investigation a “witch hunt.”
Schiff said it’s clear that Trump “believes that he has the power to fire anyone in government he chooses and for any reason.”
“It has become clear that President Trump believes that he has the power to fire anyone in government he chooses and for any reason, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That is not how the rule of law works, and Congress will not allow the President to so egregiously overstep his authority”, Schiff wrote Friday.
“If President Trump were to try to replicate Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre by firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in addition to Mueller, Congress must unite to stop him – without respect to party, and for the sake of the nation,” he added.
Trump wrote on Twitter Friday that he is being “investigated for firing the FBI Director”.
Speaking to reporters in an off-camera briefing Thursday, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump “has the right to” fire Mueller as special counsel but “has no intention to do so.”
Schiff on Friday urged his colleagues to “defend our system of checks and balances by passing an independent counsel law that empowers an independent prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation and anything that arises from it”.
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