Trump vows to launch his own inquiry

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his Republican allies went on the offensive Monday, vowing to pursue and even punish those responsible for the Russia investigation now that the special counsel has wrapped up without finding a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.

Trump, grim-faced and simmering with anger, denounced adversaries who have pounded him for two years over Russian election interference, calling them “treasonous” people who are guilty of “evil deeds” and should be investigated themselves. “Those people will certainly be looked at,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced he would do just that while also calling for a new special counsel to look at the origins of the last one. White House officials and Republican lawmakers demanded the resignation of a Democratic committee chairman investigating the Russia matter, and Trump’s re-election campaign lobbied television networks to blackball Democrats who advanced the collusion theory.

The assertive posture indicated that despite initial calls by Republican leaders to move on after the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, the president and his supporters were intent on turning the tables on his foes. While Democrats saw the actions as revenge, Trump’s defenders said they wanted accountability for a “witch hunt” that has consumed half of his term.

“There are a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, very bad things, I would say some treasonous things against our country,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I’ve been looking at them for a long time,” he added, “and I’m saying why haven’t they been looked at? They lied to Congress, many of them, you know who they are. They’ve done so many evil things.”

On the offensive

The approach, if it lasts, contrasts with those of other presidents who survived major scandals. After the Iran-Contra affair, President Ronald Reagan happily dropped the subject and focused on arms control talks with the Soviet Union and other issues. After being acquitted at his Senate impeachment trial, President Bill Clinton was just as eager to move on to Social Security and other initiatives.

But Trump and his allies Monday sought to put his adversaries on the defensive and cement the view that Mueller’s report represents complete vindication. Mueller found no conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia, but he pointedly declined to exonerate the president on obstruction of justice, according to a Justice Department letter to lawmakers Sunday.

Mueller’s report has yet to be released, so it remains unknown whether it includes damning new details that question the actions of Trump or his associates, even if they do not represent a crime. Democrats in Congress are pressing Attorney General William Barr to release the full report.

Trump said Monday that “wouldn’t bother me at all,” but Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the Senate Republican leader, later in the day blocked a nonbinding resolution — already passed unanimously by the House — calling for the report to be made public, arguing that Barr should decide.

Democrats struggled to find a path ahead, with some urging the party to turn its attention to policy differences with Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has credited such a strategy with fueling last year’s midterm election victories and said she opposed trying to impeach the president “unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan.” She plans to unveil a health care plan Tuesday.

“The report vindicates Nancy Pelosi’s judgment of proceeding with deliberateness and caution and focusing on issues that we can deliver for the American people,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a leading liberal voice in the House.

Republicans faced their own choice. After two years shadowed by Mueller, Trump has the opportunity to reset his presidency, but as he strode with new confidence into a post-Mueller world, he appeared more intent on payback.

Stephen Bannon, his former chief strategist, predicted that Trump “is going to go full animal” now that Mueller has wrapped up. The president, Bannon told Yahoo News, will “come off the chains” and use the findings to “bludgeon” his opposition.

Others close to the White House urged the president not to do that but instead focus on his own agenda. “The president has a unique historical opportunity, while in his re-election cycle, to reconnect to millions of Americans who have assumed he was guilty of serious wrongdoing, due to the unrelenting irresponsible media coverage of fake collusion,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., who golfed with Trump in Florida last weekend, agreed. “My advice to the president, for whatever it’s worth, is that you are probably stronger today than you have been at any time in your presidency,” he said, adding, “And if I were you, Mr. President, I would focus on what’s next for the country.”

Instead, Graham said, the president should leave it to him to go after the authors of the Russia investigation. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham announced that he would investigate anti-Trump bias at the FBI and Justice Department and called on Barr to appoint a second special counsel to study the same issues.

“By any reasonable standard, Mr. Mueller fully investigated the Trump campaign,” he said. “You cannot say that about the other side of the story.”

‘Who made it up?’

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, echoed that, saying that the origin of the Russia investigation should be examined. “Who made it up?” he said on Fox News. “It had to come from somewhere. It didn’t just come out of thin air. I want to know who did it, who paid for it, who fueled it.”Other Republicans piled on Democrats who have vocally asserted wrongdoing between the Trump campaign and Russia, taking aim specifically at Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the outspoken chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

“Has anyone heard from slimy Adam #fullofschiff Schiff today?” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, wrote on Twitter. “I mean it must be embarrassing to have have spent the last 2 years as the leader of the tinfoil hat brigade and have it all come crashing down so quick.”

Kellyanne Conway, the president’s counselor, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, called on Schiff to resign as chairman.

“Schiff has met the standard that he has imposed on other members of Congress of when they should step back from their positions,” McCarthy told Politico. “He has exceeded that standard, and there is no question he should step down from the intel chairmanship.”

As it happened, the one person Trump made a point of not going after Monday was Mueller, who has been on the receiving end of scalding presidential Twitter blasts for more than a year. Asked by a reporter if Mueller acted honorably, Trump said: “Yes, he did. Yes, he did.”

Congressional Democrats were not backing off, promising to push ahead with an array of investigations into Trump, his businesses and his policies, while arguing that Mueller’s scope was relatively narrow and that without seeing all of Mueller’s evidence, there was no reason to adjust course.

Sen. Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii and a member of Graham’s committee, accused Republicans of taking a narrow-minded victory lap.

“The pattern of the Republicans is very clear that they continue to play up to the president,” she said. “That is a pattern. They don’t want to look into his activities. They make excuses to him. They support everything he does, and it continues.”