Trump admits Russia was 'helping me to get elected' in 2016 but denies it minutes later – and insists 'Never Trumper' Mueller would have charged him with obstruction 'if he had ANYTHING'
- President lashed out at Robert Mueller and his team on Thursday, getting in one last jab after the special counsel announced his departure from the DOJ
- Trump tweeted that the Mueller probe had strayed far away from its mission of investigating Russia, which he admitted was 'helping me get elected' in 2016
- He denied that minutes later in a Q&A with reporters, saying: 'You know who got me elected? I got me elected'
- Trump blasted Mueller as a 'Never Trumper' who was angry the president didn't offer him James Comey's job running the FBI
- Also insisted Hillary Clinton would have been a far more Moscow-friendly president than he has been
In a stunning admission on Thursday, Donald Trump said on Twitter that Russians who interfered with the 2016 presidential contest between him and Hillary Clinton were 'helping me get elected' – but he walked that statement back minutes later.
'Russia did not get me elected. You know who got me elected? You know who got me elected? I got me elected,' the president told reporters at the White House, pointing a finger back at this own face.
'Russia didn't help me at all. Russia, if anything, I think, helped the other side,' he said.
The president had begun his morning fuming online about the final chapter in the two-year tale of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who ignited a new round of controversy Wednesday by retreading old ground as he departed the Justice Department.
President Trump said in the space of a half-hour on Thursday that Russia helped him win his election, and that it didn't
The president lashed out at Robert Mueller, saying the former special counsel targeted him out of spite because he wasn't offered a return to the FBI director job that he once held in an earlier administration
The president began Thursday morning by conceding on Twitter that Russia was 'helping me to get elected,' but walked it back minutes later when he walked out of the White House to leave for Colorado
Trump appeared to be complaining to the press that Mueller's ride into the sunset was treated like a momentous event given his probe's failure to lay a glove on the White House.
'There were no charges. None,' Trump told DailyMail.com during Thursday's South lawn departure, declaring that 'that means you're innocent.'
'There was no crime. There was no obstruction, there was no collusion, there was no nothing,' he said of the result of Mueller's lengthy and costly probe.
'And this is from a group of people that hate me. If they only found anything, they would have had it. And he knows that better than anybody.'
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Trump has complained that Russian election meddling, which launched the Mueller probe, became an afterthought as the special counsel's team focused on the question of whether he obstructed an investigation into a non-crime.
'Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax,' he wrote Thursday. 'And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn't exist.'
'This was all about Russia, Russia, Russia,' he told reporters later. 'They don't talk about Russia anymore.'
'The whole thing is a scam. It's a giant presidential harassment,' he claimed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is suspected to be behind a modest online campaign to sow dissent and chaos among Americans during the 2016 presidential election season
Trump declared, as he has in past years, that the Kremlin's leaders now regret any engagement in the U.S. election that helped him.
'I believe that Russia would rather have Hillary Clinton as President of the United States than Donald Trump,' he said. 'The reason is nobody has been tougher on Russia than me.'
Trump was leaving to speak to U.S. Air Force Academy graduates in Colorado.
He took what could be his last chance to vent about Mueller without creating a news cycle out of nothing, saying the special counsel was biased against him because he had refused to hire him as a replacement for fired FBI director James Comey.
Then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hired Mueller to lead an independent Russia probe the next day.
'I think Mueller is a true "Never Trumper." He's somebody who dislikes Donald Trump,' the president said Thursday.
'He's somebody that didn't get a job that he wanted very badly. And then he was disappointed.'
