Fox News’s Chris Wallace: Parts of Mueller report ‘damaging’ and ‘politically embarrassing’ for Trump
Fox News host Chris Wallace said Thursday that some contents of the recently released report from special counsel Robert Mueller are “damaging” and “politically embarrassing” for President Trump.
Speaking on Fox News just hours after the highly anticipated report was released with some redactions, Wallace gave his initial reaction to Mueller’s findings.
“I would have to say, reading this report, there is a lot of stuff in here that is damaging to the president, politically embarrassing to the president,” Wallace said.{mosads}Wallace pointed specifically to Trump’s directions to allies as described in the report as potentially damaging for the president.
“He directs various people — his White House counsel Don McGahn, his former campaign manager Cory Lewandowski, other people — to interfere, to try to stop the Mueller investigation, but it never actually happens,” Wallace said.
Wallace added that while Democrats will likely use the report to continue investigating Trump and holding hearings, he said he does not see enough in the report to support an impeachment attempt.
“I don’t see much of a basis here for impeachment, and certainly not enough, because you have Nancy Pelosi say repeatedly [impeachment] cannot be a purely partisan investigation, there has to be Republican buy-in,” he said, referring to the Speaker of the House, a Democrat from California. “I don’t see the kind of damaging, new smoking-gun information that would get a lot of Republicans to suddenly jump ship and say ‘you know what, this is so far over the line we are going to support an impeachment proceeding against the president.’”
Earlier in the day, Wallace knocked Attorney General William Barr for his handling of the Mueller report rollout, saying the attorney general sounded more like a counselor to Trump than the nation’s attorney general during a press conference before the report was released publicly.
During the press conference, Barr said Mueller’s report served as vindication for Trump against allegations he colluded with Russian officials to influence the 2016 election. Barr also said that while Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded based on the report that there was not substantial evidence to bring an obstruction charge.
Trump has celebrated the report, saying it proved “No collusion” and “No obstruction.”
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