White House chief of staff John Kelly reluctantly supported the appointment of an additional special prosecutor to look into the alleged misdeeds of Democrats during an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Monday. Ingraham interviewed Kelly on the debut night of her new show the “Ingraham Angle.” “I think the president has made it clear what he thinks about the Uranium One story and the Fusion GPS Story,” Ingraham told Kelly.
This is in reference to President Donald Trump’s angry tweets about the Clinton campaign funding a dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russia and an Obama-era uranium deal that Republicans have criticized.
The Fox News host asked Kelly whether he thinks there should be a special counsel “appointed to investigate all of these narratives coming out with the DNC and the Clinton campaign, actually funding research that was in part compiled by the Kremlin..Kremlin associates.”
Kelly vaguely responded that he believes the American public has a right to know what the government is doing. Ingraham asked whether Mueller should recuse himself due to him being FBI director when the Obama-era uranium deal transpired and the White House chief of staff replied that Mueller seems rather preoccupied.
“Should there be another prosecutor?” Ingraham asked.
Kelly said, “Yeah, I guess so. Again I’m not a lawyer…I think probably as a layman looking at this kind of thing we need to find someone who is very, very objective who can get to the bottom of these accusations.”
Mueller has so far charged three former Trump campaign aides as part of his investigation. One of them, former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials about his meetings with individuals allegedly tied to the Russian government. Two other former aides, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, were charged with financial crimes.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told The Daily Caller Monday that Trump should direct the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Mueller, as FBI director, oversaw a “cover up.”
The Hill reported that in 2009 the FBI “gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”
No charges were brought by federal officials and Russian firm Uranium One purchased a Canadian firm that controlled around 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.
Trump has compared the uranium deal to “Watergate, modern age.”
