During a Fox News interview on Sunday morning with Maria Bartiromo, President Trump said that he would be open to appointing a special counsel to continue U.S. Attorney John Durham’s criminal investigation into the origins of the FBI’s 2016 counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
“Will you appoint a special counsel to investigate and to continue the investigating into what took place in the 2016 election?” Bartiromo asked. “You mentioned Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe not facing accountability. Will you appoint a special counsel?”
“By the way, Comey and McCabe, that’s the least of it,” Trump responded. “You talk about the Logan Act. They used the Logan Act on General Flynn, who I was very proud to pardon. But they wanted to use and they did use the Logan Act on General Flynn. And you know where that started.”
“Look, this whole thing is a terrible situation. This should have never been allowed to happen. And, you know, it’s an embarrassment to our country. All over the world, they’re talking about it,” Trump continued. “And, yes, I would consider a special prosecutor, because, you know, this is not a counsel. It sounds so nice. I went through three years of a special counsel, prosecutor. I call prosecutor, because it’s a much more accurate term.”
“They spent $48 million, Weissmann and all Trump haters,” Trump added. “They spent $48 million. That was the Mueller investigation. They went through taxes. They went through everything. For $48 million, you look at everything. And they found no collusion, no nothing. They found nothing, after friends of mine said, you must be the cleanest guy in the world, because nobody could have gone through an examination like that. And then they announced we have no collusion. There was none.”
Later in the interview, Trump listed off his administration’s accomplishments and said “as much as I have done, I could have done more, except that I was under investigation for almost the entire — from the day I came down the escalator.”
Trump allies had hoped that a bombshell would drop from the Durham investigation right before the election, but Durham’s team reportedly expanded their investigation based on new findings in the investigation, thus eliminating the possibility that results would come out before the election.
Two months prior to news coming out that Durham would not release a report before the election, Attorney General William Barr told Fox News that there would be “significant developments” coming out from the investigation before the election.
Democrats pressed Barr during a House hearing in July to commit to not releasing any results from the investigation before the investigation. Barr said he would not comply with their wishes.
Video below (via Fox News):