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After weeks of saying he was totally exonerated, Trump now calls Mueller report ‘total bulls—‘

The president's rhetoric about the Mueller report has abruptly changed.

President Donald Trump makes remarks during a meeting of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House April 04, 2019 in Washington, DC. CREDIT: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
President Donald Trump makes remarks during a meeting of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House April 04, 2019 in Washington, DC. CREDIT: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

The day after the Justice Department released the Mueller report, President Donald Trump tweeted that, in his opinion, parts of the report are “total bullshit.” That’s quite a departure from Trump’s earlier comments, in which he claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was a “total exoneration” of him.

Last month, Trump repeatedly proclaimed his own exoneration after Attorney General William Barr released a memo which concluded that the Mueller report did not find the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

However, the redacted version of the Mueller report released Thursday implied that impeachment and removal from office could be the more suitable consequence for the president’s decisions, detailed 10 instances in which the president tried to hinder the investigation into him, and revealed more information on Russia’s interference campaign.

Now, the president is changing his tune.

In a series of tweets on Friday morning, Trump referred to the report as the “Crazy Mueller Report,” the fruits of an “Illegally Started Hoax.” He tweeted, “it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the ‘Report’ about me, some of which are total bullshit & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad).”

In his tweets, Trump seemed particularly incensed at one section of the report, that documented an occasion in which he asked White House lawyer Don McGahn why he was taking notes during a conversation.

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According to the Mueller report, Trump said of McGahn’s notes, “Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” When McGahn said he is a “real lawyer” who keeps records, Trump reportedly said, “I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes.”

Despite Trump’s previous insistence that he was exonerated by the report, his legal team has been working for months on producing a counter-report attacking the investigation’s legitimacy. That counter-report, is expected to be 34 pages in comparison to the 448-page Mueller report, and may be released next week. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told the Daily Beast in August that there is nothing in it “that isn’t publicly available in some form or another.”

Barr’s statements about the report repeatedly downplayed the factors that went into Mueller’s decision not to charge Trump.

Barr said on Thursday morning that Mueller “made it clear that he had not made the determination that there was a crime,” even though the report does not state that at all. Instead, Mueller mentions Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, one of which said, “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions” in violation of “the constitutional separation of powers.”

In addition, Mueller made it clear that he was unable to reach the judgment that the president did not commit obstruction of justice.