President Donald Trump cast fresh doubt Monday on the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, calling it a "fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump" and demanding an immediate end to the "Discredited Mueller Witch Hunt."
Trump also said onetime campaign adviser Carter Page, the subject of government documents released over the weekend, wasn't a spy or an agent of the Russians.
"Carter Page wasn't a spy, wasn't an agent of the Russians - he would have cooperated with the FBI. It was a fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump," the president tweeted, including a reference to Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.
"A disgrace to America," Trump's continued. "They should drop the discredited Mueller Witch Hunt now!"
Trump's tweets came minutes after a Fox News "Fox and Friends" appearance by Fitton, who said in the interview that the president could declassify documents his outfit released over the weekend that show the FBI used the salacious dossier by a former British spy as the backbone of its FISA warrants against Carter Page.
After that, Trump posted several direct quotes from the interview, quoting the Judicial Watch president as saying the documents about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant were classified "to cover up misconduct by the FBI and the Justice Department in misleading the Court by using this Dossier in a dishonest way to gain a warrant to target the Trump Team."
He also added that Fitton said "the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account. Source #1 was the major source. Avoided talking about it being the Clinton campaign behind it."
On Saturday, Judicial Watch released a set of four heavily redacted FISA applications, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that show the FBI used the dossier to obtain the warrants against Page.
Fitton Monday agreed with Fox News' "Fox and Friends" co-host Steve Doocy that Trump could "call somebody and declassify" the documents so "we would know what they are hiding."
Reps. "Devin Nunes and Bob Goodlatte are suggesting there is other material in there that is classified right now, but doesn't need to be classified," Fitton said. "We already see from the material that was released over the weekend that the material that was -- we were told -- they couldn't even tell us existed one way or another didn't need to be classified."
The material wasn't classified "because they were protecting national security secrets," said Fitton.
He also labeled the dossier against Trump as a "self-licking ice cream cone."
"They talk about the dossier generally, then they talk about news reports about the dossier," said Fitton of the information in the warrant requests. "Then they talk about a State Department information about Carter Page that had its origins, according to reports, in the dossier and the Clinton campaign. This is a Clinton campaign document that was presented to the court as if it weren't and then they used reports about the Clinton campaign document to justify asking for a warrant to target the Trump team."
Further, anyone who signed on to ask questions was included, and that "unfortunately includes the number two at the Justice Department, [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein," said Fitton.
"By spying on him they spied on everybody in the Trump campaign," Doocy agreed.