Civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz said Friday that President Donald Trump was right to raise questions about special counsel Robert Mueller's objectivity in the Russia probe because of his longstanding friendship with fired FBI Director James Comey.
"One can easily understand how upset Mueller would be by the way his friend was treated, understandably," the Harvard Law School professor emeritus told Anderson Cooper on CNN. "His friend was treated terribly.
"So, the perception of bias can affect at least the way the public sees this investigation.
"He can avoid this if he simply does the right thing and says that the firing by the president of Comey is not a crime," Dershowitz continued. "It is not part of this investigation.
"Then, the issue is done."
President Trump told Fox News on Friday that Mueller's friendship with Comey "very bothersome," nothing they were "very, very good friends."
Mueller, like Comey, also helmed the FBI.
On Trump's disclosure to Fox he posted the initial tweet hinting at possible Oval Office recordings of his conversations with Comey to urge him to be truthful in talking about the president, Dershowitz said: "I don't know whether it helped or hurt.
"Comey was determined to get revenge on the president by getting a special counsel appointed," he told Cooper. "He did it in a surreptitious way that doesn't redound to his reputational benefit."