Special counsel Robert Mueller has enough evidence to charge the Trump campaign with conspiring to collude with Russia to affect the 2016 presidential race, a former high-ranking FBI official says.
Chuck Rosenberg -- who served as the FBI’s chief of staff and acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency – told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday:
"There are bits and pieces in the public record that suggest that it wasn’t just Russians. The timing of the president’s statements in Doral, Florida, urging the Russians to go find the missing emails [of Hillary Clinton] or hack into the DNC computers.
"All of that is tied to Russian activity that Mr. Mueller recently charged when he brought a case against the Russian intelligence officers. So I think there is enough."
But whether Mueller could actually file charges against Trump is another question, according to Rosenberg.
"I think there are other calculations that are really important here, like, for instance, whether Mr. Mueller believes he has the authority to charge a sitting president. There’s some debate on that point," he said.
"The Department of Justice weighed in on it in the past and has opined that you cannot, so there’s some unanswered questions, but I think the pieces are there."
Rosenberg’s comments came hours after prosecutors in Virginia wrapped up the first day of the trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman who is charged with tax evasion and bank fraud.