Alabama Rep. Morris Jackson “Mo” Brooks Jr. (R-Ala.) recently weighed in on special counsel Robert Mueller’s statement on his investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election, saying that the federal employees responsible for initiating the probe should be investigated for alleged crimes.
During the interview, Brooks claimed Mueller allegedly knew shortly after he was appointed as special counsel that there was no evidence of collusion but continued with the investigation for political reasons. He said one recourse for the investigation that took over two years is for Attorney General William Barr to investigate how the probe went on for so long and to uncover any crimes from the people involved.
“On the executive branch side, Barr on his own can be and should be investigating how this got that far wasting this amount of taxpayer dollars. At some point in this process, there was somebody who made false statements about alleged Russian collusion to someone in the executive branch,” Brooks said.
“That is obstruction of justice. That is making false statements to law enforcement officers. And those people, whoever those people are, they need to be uncovered, and they need to be prosecuted because they’re the ones who are responsible for this two-year debacle, this two-year investigation, this waste of $35 million investigating a non-event,” he added.
Jackson then asked whether they were ever going to catch those people involved, to which Brooks replied, “I do not know.”
“I certainly hope so. And I hope that this attorney general will be aggressive and get to the bottom of it because the people who are engaged in these kinds of lies, this kind of wasting of taxpayer money, should not get away with it. We should catch them,” he said.
“We should put them in jail to the maximum term allowed by law, because we should never allow federal government employees to go rogue, to try to engage in what in effect a coup d’état against a sitting president of the United States. That is serious, and that needs to be dealt with seriously,” he said.
“Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant and a FISA warrant. I’d like to find out whether that is in fact true,” Barr said, when asked whether other improper conduct took place apart from the alleged misconduct with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop a threat as it’s being represented,” he added.
The special counsel’s report concluded that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Moreover, Mueller did not make a determination as to whether the president obstructed justice, later saying it was due to a DOJ policy which prohibits charging a sitting president with a federal crime.
“I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision,” Barr said during an interview with CBS on May 30. Barr said Mueller “had his reasons” for not making a recommendation but declined to explain, adding: “I’m not going to, you know, argue about those reasons.”
Barr said the office’s opinion was relevant but didn’t prohibit what Mueller thought it did.
“The opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office, but he could’ve reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity,” Barr said.
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