WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump on Friday ignored his attorney general’s public request to stop tweeting about the Justice Department, saying he had the legal right to ask the agency to intervene in a criminal case but so far has “chosen not to.”
Trump’s Friday morning tweet came just hours after Attorney General William Barr said in a striking interview with ABC News that the president’s tweets were making it “impossible for me to do my job,” especially following the department’s bungled handling of the sentencing recommendation for Trump ally and confidant Roger Stone.
Trump, in his tweet, left open the possibility that he would ask Barr for something in a criminal matter in the future.
Barr has already appointed a U.S. attorney who is conducting a criminal investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe of the 2016 election that morphed into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Trump-Russia cooperation.
The Justice Department is also reviewing the handling of the federal investigation into Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its probe of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The U.S. attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, is working with Brandon Van Grack, a member of Mueller’s team, to review the Flynn case, a Justice Department official said.