Donald Trump may have tweeted himself into more trouble.
The president`s Twitter revelation yesterday that there are, in fact, no tapes of his conversations with ousted FBI Director James Comey hurts his credibility in a widening probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and may draw additional legal scrutiny.
Worse, former prosecutors toldBloomberg`s Washington bureau that the special counsel investigating the Russia matter, Robert Mueller, may consider whether Trump attempted to intimidate Comey when he suggested on Twitter last month that tapes existed of their conversations.
Without recordings, a key question for investigators will be who to believe: Comey or Trump? The former FBI director contemporaneously wrote memos documenting his encounters with Trump, and even Republican senators describe him as trustworthy. The president has a history of making unsubstantiated claims and says Comey is lying about key points without providing evidence.
Trump even appeared to question the integrity of Mueller himself in an interview with Fox News airing today. Trump describes Mueller’s friendship with Comey as “very bothersome.”
Trump is doing himself no favors at this point, lawyers say. Meddling in the investigation may ultimately cause him far more harm than the suspicions that sparked the probe in the first place.
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