US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he would leave it up to Attorney General William Barr to decide whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller should testify before the Congress over his report on alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election.
"I'm going to leave that up to our very great attorney general. He'll make a decision on that," CNN quoted Trump as saying while addressing a presser at the White House.
His comments marked an apparent reversal to his tweet on the weekend where he said Mueller "should not testify" before the Congress.
"After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents - all culminating in a more than 400 page 'Report' showing NO COLLUSION - why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller to testify," Trump had written on Twitter on Sunday.
"Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!" he had added.
Reiterating that Mueller's investigation was a hoax, Trump said that there was "never a crime."
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"There's no crime, there never was a crime, this was a hoax. This comes back totally exonerating Donald Trump," The Hill quoted Trump as saying.
The matter pertains to Mueller being discontented earlier Barr over his handling of the investigation report, saying that he failed to "fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of his investigations' findings.
Barr defended his handling of the case during a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing recently, where he repeatedly denied accusations and insinuations by the Democrats that he had lied or misrepresented anything.
Last month, Muller's report revealed that there was no criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump's campaign during the 2016 polls. Although Mueller probed 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump, he did not make charges, according to The Hill.
Subsequently, Barr said that no obstruction charges would be carried out against Trump.
Meanwhile, the House Democrats is in favour of Mueller's testimony before the Congress and have demanded Barr to release the full version of Mueller's report, claiming that the Attorney General did not present the correct version of the investigation.