Donald Trump asked Scott Morrison to help discredit Robert Muller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
US President Donald Trump spoke on the telephone with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and asked him to assist US Attorney General William Barr in finding information to discredit the investigation of Attorney General Robert Mueller. This was reported with reference to two officials by The New York Times on Tuesday, October 1.
The White House has restricted access to call decryption. Only a small group of presidential aides can familiarize themselves with its contents. According to one of the newspaper’s interlocutors, this resembles the situation with Trump’s call to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, in connection with which the Democrats in the US Congress began the process of impeachment.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice confirmed the newspaper’s report, saying that US Attorney John Durham, who ascertain the reasons for the start of Mueller’s investigation, “is collecting information from numerous sources, including several foreign countries”.
“At the request of Attorney General Barr, the president contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to the relevant officials,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec.
In turn, White House deputy spokeswoman Hogan Gidley said the Justice Department asked the president to establish ties between him and foreign officials to advance the investigation, and “he did it, that’s all”.
Mueller’s investigation confirmed that Australia played a central role in the origin of the initial FBI investigation. According to him, information from the “foreign government” prompted the FBI to “open an investigation into whether the persons associated with the Trump campaign coordinated the actions of the Russian government in its intervention activities.
Recall that in April the US Department of Justice published a report by Mueller on the results of a two-year investigation about the alleged collusion of the US president with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
The special prosecutor found that the Russian Federation intervened in the US presidential election in 2016, but Trump’s election headquarters did not participate in this.