Sen. Lindsey Graham sent a sharp warning Thursday to President Donald Trump that it “could be the beginning of the end” of his presidency if he makes moves to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
The South Carolina Republican, who in the late 1990s served as a House impeachment manager against President Bill Clinton, said Trump would be crossing a serious “red line” by ordering the ouster of the lead investigator who is probing his campaign’s ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency unless Mueller did something wrong,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill, where he outlined plans to introduce legislation next week that would move to block any Trump attempts to fire Mueller.
Graham said his bill — which he promised would have Republican support and “all the Democrats” — would mandate that any special counsel established to investigate either a president or his staff can’t be fired “unless you have judicial review of the firing.”
“We need a check and balance here,” Graham said. He is working on the legislation with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who in an MSNBC interview on Monday described the bill as an attempt to “try and make sure that the president can’t just fire a special prosecutor.”
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“This effort to basically marginalize and humiliate the attorney general is not going over well with the Senate. I don’t think it’s going over well in the conservative world. If you believe Jeff Sessions should be fired, use the power you have and accept the consequences. I hope it stops,” Graham said, adding, “If Jeff Sessions is fired there will be holy hell to pay.”
On Fox News the same morning, Graham appeared to speak directly to the president, who is known to watch the network: “I would suggest quit humiliating Jeff.”
Graham told reporters a Mueller firing would cause serious political and constitutional consequences for Trump.
“The idea that the president would fire Mueller or have somebody fire Mueller because he doesn’t like Mueller, or Mueller is doing something he doesn’t like, then we become Russia,” Graham said. “So the red line should never be drawn. The president is not in the business of drawing red lines when it comes to the law. The law is above any presidential red line.”
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.@LindseyGrahamSC: Firing Mueller would be 'beginning of the end' of Trump's presidency https://t.co/d0QFamPidm pic.twitter.com/YnhluJUwpe
— POLITICO (@politico) July 27, 2017
Graham earlier: Says he'll introduce bipartisan legislation next week to prevent firing of Special Counsel Bob Mueller. pic.twitter.com/UYD2rYOamq
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) July 27, 2017
I would like to see Trump fire Mueller and/or Sessions, then have one or both of them come out with something that will remove this incompetent lowlife bully from the White House. I am not a huge fan of Pence, but surely he would be a vast improvement over Trump.
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