WASHINGTON: Pres­i­dent Donald Trump says he is not considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller, but he’s plenty upset about the way the Russia probe investigator obtained and is using thousands of emails sent and received by senior Trump transition officials.

The president says of the emails, “I can’t imagine there’s anything on ‘em, frankly. Because, as we said, there’s no collusion” with Russia during last year’s campaign. But he said the way Mueller got them was “not looking good; it’s quite sad”.

Trump was asked about the emails on Sunday after the disclosure that Muel­ler’s team had obtained them from the General Services Administration, a federal agency that stored the material, rather than requesting them from Trump’s presidential transition organisation.

The GSA improperly pro­­vided the records, asserted Kory Langhofer, general cou­n­sel of Trump’s still-existing transition group, Trump for America.

Trump has been harshly critical of Muel­ler’s probe of Russian activities during the 2016 campaign. But when asked if he was planning to fire the former FBI director, Trump said, “I’m not.”

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2017