Former special counsel Robert Mueller deliberately misled President Trump's lawyers by attempting to set up a "perjury trap," charges a member of the president's legal team.
In an interview with Fox News' Gregg Jarrett, John Dowd contended Mueller deliberately deceived the president in a "monstrous lie and scheme to defraud" before acknowledging after nearly two years that he couldn't verify the Democrats' claims of Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
Mueller, whose mental acuity was questioned even by his supporters after his performance at a congressional hearing, "engineered" a "perjury trap" for the president, just as James Comey's FBI "invented a trap for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn," Dowd said.
The DOJ recently filed a motion to drop its case against Flynn after the unsealing of evidence showing the prosecution had no legal foundation.
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"Mueller's scheme was the same one captured in the (newly released) FBI set-up notes pertaining to Flynn," Dowd told Jarrett. "They knew they had nothing, but using their official power they created and perpetuated the façade of an investigation."
Even the president's delivery of his campaign promise of transparency was used against him, Dowd said.
The lawyer alleged Mueller's team "misled" the president's lawyers "in order to manufacture a crime where none existed."
Jarret wrote in a FoxNews.com opinion piece: "According to Dowd, Mueller learned early in his investigation that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to influence the 2016 presidential election. He admitted it during a meeting with the president’s lawyers on March 5, 2018. So, Mueller shifted to a legally contorted interpretation of obstruction of justice in order to keep his investigation afloat," Jarrett wrote.
Dowd told him: "As I look back, we had the most perfect trusting relationship with Mueller based on his word and handshake, which held throughout. No paper. Word was solid. They received everything they asked for without a hitch or page missing, including the most intimate notes of conversations with and by POTUS (President of the United States). Every witness they requested testified truthfully. No lying. No grand jury testimony. Mueller affirmed all of this in our March 5 (2018) meeting. How could there be a whisper of obstruction under these circumstances?"
The scheme became apparent when Mueller kept demanding that the president be "interviewed" even though there was no evidence of an underlying crime.
"Dowd knew it was a trap. Mueller had done it to Flynn and others. He was clearly angling for obstruction of justice and hoping to ensnare the president in the equivalent of a perjury trap if he consented to be interviewed," Jarrett wrote.
But the issue remained: How could there be obstruction if there was no crime?
Jarrett explained Dowd came to understand he "had been conned all along."
"That is when I knew he had lied to me in our original meeting (June 16, 2017) and every meeting thereafter. Robert Mueller —‘D.C.’s great man’ — completely and deliberately misled us in order to set up a perjury/false statement trap for POTUS. It was a monstrous lie and scheme to defraud."
Dowd shared documents and letters supporting his contention.
"They paint a vivid picture of a special counsel determined to damage the president with an investigation bereft of any credible evidence," Jarrett wrote.
The special counsel even had suggested that Trump's firing of Comey, who was Mueller's longtime friend, "might constitute obstruction."
"This was especially ludicrous since both Comey and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe had testified that no one had obstructed the bureau’s investigation and that the probe had continued uninterrupted after Comey’s departure," Jarrett argued.
But Mueller would not relent, even after Dowd "patiently explained" the firing was an exercise of presidential authority under the Constitution.
Jarrett explained there was a point when "Mueller became so desperate that he broached the absurd idea of how Trump’s public criticism of the special counsel might be construed somehow as an obstructive act."
Dowd, Jarrett said, believed that Mueller and his subordinates "were now living in an alternative universe where their version of the law bore no resemblance to statutes, Supreme Court decisions and accepted constitutional law."
One of the documents Dowd shared was a letter the president's legal team wrote to Mueller more than two years ago arguing the FBI's investigation of Trump was based on Russian disinformation fed to Christopher Steele. The former British spy composed the debunked anti-Trump "dossier" while being paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Jarrett noted: "Just last month, more than two years after Dowd’s letter, declassified documents were released proving that Kremlin-sponsored disinformation drove the collusion case. Comey and his confederates deliberately exploited what they knew to be untrue and discredited information. They used it as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign and investigate the president. This led to the illegitimate appointment of the special counsel, Bob Mueller, who launched an investigation in search of a crime that never occurred. As Dowd correctly stated in his letter, the special counsel appointment was 'void' because it was the product of corruption."
Dowd's conclusion?
"They knew there was nothing to investigate. People subverted the system of justice. One corrupt act after another. It’s staggering. The lies were monstrous. It was all pretense and fraud. Mueller should not walk. Rod Rosenstein should not walk."
In fact, U.S. Attorney John Durham now is conducting a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia collusion claims.