Mueller ‘ruining lives’ as Manafort accused of lies, claims Trump

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump said Robert Mueller is behaving “viciously,” a day after the special counsel accused Trump’s former campaign chairman of lying in breach of an agreement to cooperate with authorities.
In one of his most sustained and rambling attacks yet, Trump said on Twitter that Mueller is “ruining lives” as punishment against witnesses who he said refuse to lie.
The president’s attack on the investigation comes after Mueller said in court filings that a cooperation pact with Trump’s one-time campaign chief Paul Manafort was void because Manafort lied to federal investigators and prosecutors.
The rupture in relations could hamper Mueller’s ability to turn other insiders against Trump in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and has raised questions about whether Manafort could be angling for a presidential pardon.
“Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie,” Trump said.
Trump didn’t mention Manafort, 69, directly in his posts. But he said in subsequent messages that Mueller “is doing Tremendous damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes
will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller.”
Mueller hasn’t made public any evidence that Manafort conspired in Russia’s election interference. But the Guardian reported that Manafort repeatedly held secret talks with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he’s sought asylum from prosecution.
One such visit came in 2016, at about the time Manafort joined Trump’s campaign, the publication said, citing sources it didn’t identify.
During the campaign, WikiLeaks published emails from the Democratic National Committee that US officials say were hacked by Russian intelligence operatives. Mueller said that Manafort lied repeatedly to authorities after he’d pledged to cooperate as part of a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.