President Donald Trump has every right to be angry at Attorney Jeff Sessions over special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but he won't fire him because the "fix is on in Washington" and taking such action could result in another "Watergate-like environment" in Congress, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday.
"The Senate would go crazy," Gingrich told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "A third of the Republicans would go crazy, and you would be back in a kind of Watergate-like environment in Congress."
Earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted that Sessions "should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt," referring to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He also complained that Mueller had brought in "17 Angry Democrats" to do his "dirty work."
Sessions long ago recused himself from the case, but Gingrich said the attorney general, if he wished to, has "absolute authority to fire the entire Mueller team."
However, Trump is "far better to endure" the investigation, even if he's angry, but still he should wait it out, said Gingrich.
The former Speaker also said he had thought Mueller was a "very respectable guy" and defended him when he was first appointed as special counsel, but he's since changed his opinion about the former FBI director.
"I watched him hire these 17 lawyers that Trump was talking about," said Gingrich. "This is a disgraceful, one-sided witch hunt by a bunch of left-wing Democrats, and it is compromised because we have learned since then about [former FBI Director James] Comey, we've learned since then about the number two guy at the FBI [Andrew McCabe], we've learned since then about Peter Strzok."
"Every time we turn around, we learn more things that indicate that the sickness in the Justice Department and the senior levels of the FBI was very real and I think should scare everybody," said Gingrich. "[With] the police being that corrupt, [there are] huge dangers for freedom in America. "
Trump Wednesday morning also tweeted a complaint as the trial opened for his short-term former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, noting that Manafort had also worked for "Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, many other respected political leaders and worked for me for a very short time. Why didn't government tell me that he was under investigation? These old charges have nothing to do with collusion. A hoax."
Gingrich said he feels Trump has every right to be "deeply, deeply frustrated at the failure of his attorney general to exercise leadership."
He also noted a Wall Street Journal article from Wednesday, in which a former FBI spokesperson wrote a "devastating piece" suggesting that former CIA Director John Brennan may have used the agency to set up the FBI to start the whole Mueller investigation based on a series of things "we now know increasingly are false."
"Imagine you're the president and saying 'let me get this straight, the FBI lied to the FISA court judge, the CIA may have deliberately set up the FBI, and I got an attorney general who doesn't have the toughness needed to start cleaning out the snake pit," said Gingrich.
Further, he noted that the Manafort trial is not about Russian collusion but about taxes and bank fraud.
"This is exactly what an independent counsel does," said Gingrich. "They can't solve the case the way they were hired to do. If Manafort wins it, and there is a good chance he will, Mueller will look like a fool, and I think the whole country will shrug off everything else that Mueller does."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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