After Trump says 'we'll see' about firing Mueller, Democrats hit back

Chuck Schumer. — (Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

After President Trump was finished lashing out at Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the FBI, and Hillary Clinton's emails on Monday evening, he fielded a question from an unidentified reporter: "Why don't you just fire Mueller?"

"Well, I think it's a disgrace what's going on," Trump responded. "We'll see what happens. I think it's really a sad situation when you see what happened. Many people have said you should fire him." Trump was upset over FBI agents raiding the office, home, and hotel room of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Cohen is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations, according to The Washington Post, and Cohen's lawyer says the raid was related to a referral by Mueller.

After Trump made his remarks, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that if he's "thinking of using the FBI raid to fire Special Counsel Mueller or otherwise interfere with the chain of command in the Russia probe, we Democrats have one simple message for him: don't." Mueller is a Republican, Schumer noted, and has "uncovered a deep and detailed pattern of Russian interference in our elections that led to indictments and guilty pleas. It also led to the Trump administration itself leveling sanctions against Russian individuals, proof that it's not a so-called 'witch hunt.' The investigation is critical to the health of our democracy, and must be allowed to continue."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.