Trump tries to shift focus as first charges reportedly loom in Russia case

Pushing back against the accelerating criminal investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, President Trump argued on Sunday that its focus should instead be on his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, even as the special counsel’s inquiry was reportedly poised to produce its first indictment.

In a series of tweets, Mr Trump said Republicans were now fighting the Russia allegations by looking into Mrs Clinton, apparently referring to new House investigations into her email practices and an Obama-era uranium deal with Russia. But the president made it clear he believed that Mrs Clinton should be pursued more forcefully, writing, “DO SOMETHING!”

He did not say who should take action or what it should be, though critics have accused him of trying to sway the congressional and special counsel inquiries into Russian ties. Still, the outburst suggested that Mr Trump, increasingly angry and frustrated about the investigations, is waging a concerted campaign to shift the focus to Mrs Clinton and other Democrats.

After long expressing anger that his allies have not done enough to protect him from the inquiries, he is now enlisting White House and administration officials, employing his vast social media presence, and putting pressure on the Republican-led Congress to deflect any potentially damaging reports.

Last week, Mr Trump asserted that it was Mrs Clinton who was guilty of having colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election, endeavoring to turn the tables on the crux of the allegations against his campaign, and then sent his spokeswoman to the White House briefing room to repeat that charge. He urged the Justice Department to lift a gag order on an informant in a federal investigation involving Russia’s efforts to gain a foothold in the American uranium industry during the Obama administration.

And on Sunday, in tweets to his more than 40 million followers, he offered a litany of accusations against Mrs Clinton and seemed to praise Republicans for starting the new congressional investigations.

“Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more,” Mr Trump wrote. “Instead they look at phony Trump/Russia ‘collusion,’ which doesn’t exist.”

“The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s,” he added, “are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”

Mr Trump was apparently referring to reports last week that Mrs Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee had paid for research that was included in a salacious dossier made public in January by BuzzFeed. The dossier contained claims about connections between Mr Trump, his associates and Russia.

The president was also reviving unproved allegations that Mrs Clinton was part of a quid pro quo in which the Clinton Foundation received donations in exchange for her support as secretary of state for a business deal that gave Russia control over a large share of uranium production in the United States.

And he was returning to questions about Mrs Clinton’s use of a private email server and how James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, handled an investigation into the matter, which was closed with no charges being filed. Mr Trump initially cited the email case as a reason for firing Mr Comey, before conceding that it was because of the Russia inquiry.

The president’s Twitter fusillade came as he and his advisers braced for the first public action by Robert S. Mueller III, the special prosecutor named after Mr Comey’s ouster to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election. As part of his inquiry, Mr Mueller is believed to be examining whether there was collusion between Mr Trump’s campaign and Moscow, and whether the president obstructed justice when he fired Mr Comey.

CNN reported on Friday that a federal grand jury in Washington had approved the first charges in Mr Mueller’s investigation, and that plans had been made for anyone charged to be taken into custody as early as Monday. CNN said the target of the charges was unclear. The New York Times has not confirmed that charges have been approved.

Multiple congressional committees have undertaken their own investigations into Russian meddling in the elections, following up on the conclusion of United States intelligence agencies that Moscow sought to sway the contest in favor of Mr Trump — an idea that he has frequently dismissed as a hoax.

Some Republicans have been reluctant to embrace Mr Trump’s efforts to shift the spotlight away from Russia’s interference, arguing that the episode should be scrutinized as a foreign policy and national security issue, not a matter of personal grievance for the president.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said that Mr Trump had been “too defensive” about Mr Mueller’s inquiry. “We ought to instead focus on the outrage that the Russians meddled in our elections,” said Mr Portman, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, urged his fellow Republicans on “Fox News Sunday” to give Mr Mueller “a chance to do his job.” But a Trump ally, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, said on ABC’s “This Week” that if unspecified “new facts” put Mr Mueller in a “compromised position,” he must recuse himself.

Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer handling the response to the Russia investigation, said that the president’s tweets were “unrelated to the activities of the special counsel, with whom he continues to cooperate.”

But they reflected a habit of Mr Trump’s in which he seeks to tar an opponent with the same accusations leveled at him. He did so last year during a presidential debate when Mrs. Clinton called him “Putin’s puppet,” responding: “No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet. No, you’re the puppet.”

The tweets came days after House Republicans announced that they were opening new investigations into two of Mr Trump’s most frequently cited grievances: the Obama Justice Department’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails and the uranium deal.

Mr Trump is working to fuel those inquiries. The White House acknowledged on Friday that the president had urged the Justice Department to release the informant in the uranium investigation from his confidentiality agreement so he could speak to Congress. Critics called the move improper presidential interference in a federal criminal inquiry, but Mr Trump’s advisers said he was merely encouraging transparency.

In recent days Mr Trump has suggested that he believes that the questions he has been raising about Mrs Clinton’s conduct should put to rest any allegations about his own actions, and end the scrutiny of Russia’s meddling in the election.

“This was the Democrats coming up with an excuse for losing an election,” Mr Trump told reporters last week. “They lost it by a lot. They didn’t know what to say, so they made up the whole Russia hoax. Now it’s turning out that the hoax has turned around, and you look at what’s happened with Russia, and you look at the uranium deal, and you look at the fake dossier. So that’s all turned around.”

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that while she had yet to encounter “any definitive evidence of collusion,” she had seen “lots of evidence that the Russians were very active in trying to influence the elections.”