Barbour: Quit Believing All the 'Rumor Mongering' on Mueller

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, after being appointed as special counsel in the Russia election probe, is supposed to do his job and that's what should be expected of him, and it's time to quit listening to unsubstantiated reports about him, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Friday.

"The thing that bothers me most is all of the rumor mongering," Barbour told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, while urging people to take heed of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's warning against trusting stories based on anonymous sources.

"He's supposed to do his job and that's what we should expect and what we should want," Barbour said of Mueller. "Even the career Justice Department deputy attorney general, the only political opponent he got was from the Obama administration, we should listen to what that guy said."

Thursday night, Rosenstein urged Americans to "exercise caution" with stories attributed to anonymous sources, reports The Washington Post.

"Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous 'officials,' particularly when they do not identify the country — let alone the branch of agency of government — with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated," Rosenstein said in a statement. "Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a long established policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations."

"Don't believe all of these unvouched for don't know who said it," Barbour agreed Friday. "Remember how many people at the Justice Department have been appointed by the Trump administration? Virtually none. There are people that have been there a long, long time who are Democrats."

There are already many Republicans, including the Republican National Committee, who are already questioning Mueller's legitimacy, but Barbour said he does not question it.

"But what other people do is not up to me," said the former governor. "I would say the very good advice is that on NBC, CBS or Fox News, they ought not to make the whole story 'somebody said, somebody said, somebody said' but that is the whole story."

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