Federal scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen doesn’t mean that he’s “intimately connected” to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Sen. Susan Collins said Sunday.
In an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” the Maine Republican said the FBI raid on Cohen’s office wasn’t directly initiated by by the Mueller investigation.
"The fact that the special counsel referred the allegations against Mr. Cohen back to the Justice Department, and was referred to the [U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York] suggests to me that it's not intimately connected to the Russian probe,” she said.
Collins also was critical of former FBI Director James Comey’s book that criticizes Trump — but doesn’t think it’ll disrupt the Mueller probe.
"I cannot imagine why an FBI director would seek to essentially cash in on a book when the investigation is very much alive,” she said. “He should have waited to do his memoir."
The senator advised Trump to stand firm on the spending bill just passed, and resist calls to rescind some spending measures.
"I would advise the president to focus on the coming years -- and not relitigate," she said.
“This is what's an agreement that all the parties were in the room, both chambers and the administration agreed to,” she added. “I don't think anyone should renege on it. We should focus going forward on the appropriation bills before us.”