During a statement to reporters, the president reacted to the F. B. I.’s raid on the office of his personal lawyer, discussed his frustration with the special counsel and talked about potential military action in Syria.
President Trump spoke to reporters on Monday at the beginning of a meeting with military leaders and national security officials. He reacted to the news that the F. B. I. raided the office of his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, and discussed his frustrations with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and the special counsel’s investigation being led by Robert S. Mueller III.
Mr. Trump also touched on the potential for military action in Syria in the wake of a suspected chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government that killed dozens of people over the weekend.
The following is a transcript of those remarks, as prepared by The New York Times.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So, I just heard that they broke in to the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man, and it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given, I believe, over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel. They continue to just go forward and here we are talking about Syria, we’re talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever, and I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now, and actually much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination it started.
And it’s a disgrace, it’s frankly a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for. So when I saw this and when I heard it — I heard it like you did — I said that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness. So this has been going on, I saw one of the reporters who is not necessarily a fan of mine, not necessarily very good to me, he said in effect that this is ridiculous, this is now getting ridiculous. They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia, the reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion.
This is the most biased group of people, these people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen. Democrats, all — or just about all — either Democrats, or a couple of Republicans, that worked for President Obama — they’re not looking at the other side. They’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton, horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed. They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side.
They only keep looking at us. So they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, “Well, let’s keep going,” and they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning and I think it’s a disgrace.
So we’ll be talking about it more, but this is the most conflicted group of people I’ve ever seen. The attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this, and when he recused himself, or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have used a — put a different attorney general in. So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country, but you’ll figure that out.
All I can say is after looking for a long period of time, not even before the special counsel because it really started just about from the time I won the nomination, and you look at what took place and what happened and it’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. I’ve been president now for what seems like a lengthy period of time. We’ve done a fantastic job. We’ve beaten ISIS. We have just about 100 percent of the caliphate or the land. Our economy is incredible.
The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise of, you know, this nonsense that’s going on. It dropped a lot. It was up — way up — and then it dropped quite a bit at the end, a lot. But that we have to go through that, we’ve had that hanging over us now from the very, very beginning and yet the other side, they don’t even bother looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious: Lies under oath, all over the place, emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted, nobody’s ever seen — 33,000 emails are deleted after getting a subpoena for Congress, and nobody bothers looking at that.
And many, many other things, so I just think it’s a disgrace that a thing like this can happen.
With all of that being said, we are here to discuss Syria tonight. We’re the greatest fighting force anywhere in the world. These gentlemen and ladies are incredible people. Incredible talent, and we’re making a decision as to what we do with respect to the horrible attack that was made near Damascus, and it will be met, and it will be met forcefully. And when, I will not say because I don’t like talking about timing, but we are developing the greatest force that we’ve ever had.
We had $700 billion just approved which was the reason I went along with that budget, because we had to fix our military. General Mattis would tell you that above anybody, we had to fix our military and right now we’re in a big process of doing that, $700 million and then $716 billion next year. So we’re going to make a decision tonight or very shortly thereafter and you’ll be hearing the decision.
But we can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed, and you can see that and it’s horrible. We can’t let that happen. In our world, we can’t let that happen. Especially when we’re able to, because of the power of the United States, because of the power of our country, we’re able to stop it.
I want to thank Ambassador John Bolton for joining us. I think he’s going to be a fantastic representative of our team. He’s highly respected by everybody in this room and, John, I want to thank you very much, this is going to be a lot of work. Interesting day, he picked today as his first day. So, generals, I think he picked the right day. But certainly you’re going to find it very exciting but you are going to do a fantastic job and I appreciate you joining us.
JOHN R. BOLTON: Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.
TRUMP: Thank you all very much.
REPORTER: Any concerns about what the F. B. I. might find, Mr. President?
TRUMP: No.
REPORTER: Do you have any concerns?
TRUMP: No, I’m not.
REPORTER: Did you have an affair with Stormy Daniels?
REPORTER: Why don’t you just fire Mueller?
TRUMP: Why don’t I just fire Mueller?
REPORTER: Yeah, just fire the guy.
TRUMP: Well, I think it’s a disgrace, what’s going on. We’ll see what happens. But I think it’s really a sad situation when you look at what happened. And many people have said you should fire him. Again, they found nothing and in finding nothing, that’s a big statement.
