Republicans Tell President Trump To Let Robert Mueller Work

A number of Republican lawmakers took to cable news shows Sunday to tell President Donald Trump to let special counsel Robert Mueller work.

"I don't know what the designs are on Mueller, but it seems to be building toward [firing him], and I just hope it doesn't go there, because it can't. We can't, in Congress, accept that," Sen. Jeff Flake said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"Are you worried that the president is preparing to order the firing of Mueller? It sure looks that way from his tweets," Jake Tapper asked Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Graham responded, "Well ... if he tried to do that, would be the beginning of the end of his presidency because we're a rule-of-law nation."

"My advice to the president is the same thing I just told his lawyer ... give [Mueller] the time, the resources, the independence to do his job," Rep. Trey Gowdy said on Fox News.

Over the weekend the president complained about Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Twitter. He said the probe "should never have been started" and suggested it was politically stacked with Democrats. It was the first time Trump used Mueller's name on Twitter.

And on Saturday, Trump's personal lawyer said it was time to shut down the investigation altogether. He originally said he was speaking for Trump but later told CNN he was only speaking for himself.

And while this does seem to be a shift in tone for Trump and his lawyer, the president can't actually fire Mueller. That duty would fall to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who recently said he had no cause to fire the special counsel.