President Donald Trump's reported urging of FBI Director James Comey to drop part of the agency's Russia-U.S. election probe was inappropriate – and showed he has not made the transition from CEO to POTUS, according to former Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Speaking at an event sponsored by the Federalist Society, the former top prosecutor for President George W. Bush and a frequent Trump surrogate said Trump may have been oblivious to what he really doing by asking the FBI drop its probe of former national security adviser Mike Flynn, Politico reported.
"That conversation may be appropriate to a minor disciplinary matter in a corporation," Mukasey said, Politico reported. "It's not appropriate to a criminal investigation, and the inability to distinguish the one from the other, I think, is extraordinary."
"The president, I think . . . has the power to direct that an investigation cease, but that wasn't — as the story is told, that's not what happened," the former attorney general said. "This kind of informal, 'Would you cut this guy some slack? He's a nice guy,' that kind of conversation about an ongoing proceeding conducted in a manner that is extraordinarily informal . . . suggests a complete unconsciousness of what it is that's actually happening."
Mukasey also said, though, he was not opposed to Trump's firing of Comey, it was badly timed, remarking "the ideal time to have done that would've been on Jan. 20," Politico reported.
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