<h1><i>Trump wants probe<br /> of the probers</h1></i>

'This was an illegal takedown -- that failed'

President Trump and his lawyer,

Rudolph Giuliani, are pushing the Justice Department to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion probe.

"It began illegally. and hopefully somebody's going to look at the other side," Trump said.

"This was an illegal takedown -- that failed."

Trump was likely referring to reports that the investigation was begun and continued based on deceptive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant applications -- applications that failed to fully disclose that the FBI was relying on opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Trump may have also had in mind that top FBI agents saw the inquiry as an "insurance policy" that could be used to destroy him in the event he won the election.


Rudolp Giuliani, left, and Andrew Weissmann

Giuliani urged a vigorous probe of the origins of the Trump investigation.

"I think there has to be a full complete, investigation, with at least as much enthusiasm" as the Mueller probe and its predecessor national security probe, Giuliani said on Fox News. The Justice Department could handle such an inquiry, he said. There is no question of a conflict of interest and no need for a special counsel, Giuliani said.

Giuliani said he has known since his days on the Trump

campaign that there was no collusion with Russia during the campaign and that the collusion charge was "phony."

Giuliani also said Trump's lawyers had complained to the Justice Department that a special counsel prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had behaved unethically in the case of Jerome Corsi, a journalist who has said he was pressured to perjure himself. Giuliani said Corsi was given a statement and told to sign it or he would be destined for prison.

Giuliani praised Corsi for having had the courage to refuse. Giuliani added that during his days as a federal prosecutor conduct like Weissmann's would have merited firing.

The former New York City mayor also complained of how Paul Manafort was pressed to make an anti-Trump confession while enduring the stress of weeks of solitary confinement.

Some Democrats are focusing on the fact

that Special Counsel Robert Mueller refused to exonerate Trump on a charge of obstruction of justice, but left the obstruction decision up to Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervised Mueller. Barr and Rosenstein determined that there were insufficient grounds to lodge obstruction charges. They did not find it necessary to take into account whether a sitting president can be indicted.

Alan Dershowitz, the civil libertarian who backs Trump's right to be president, chastised Mueller. The special counsel's failure to indict or exonerate Trump on obstruction was shameful, Dershowitz said on Fox. Mueller was in effect smearing Trump who could not contest the allegation in a court of law, the former Harvard law professor said.

The lawyer said Mueller's maneuver was no different from what James Comey did as FBI chief when he decided against prosecution of Hillary Clinton but said disparaging things about her that she was in no position to rebut.

Trump was thought by some to have obstructed justice

when he fired his FBI director, James Comey. Mueller had wanted to ask Trump about his motives for the ouster, though Trump's legal team pushed back, arguing that Trump could not obstruct himself as he had a right, under the Constitution's Article 2, to manage the FBI. Yet there was suspicion that Trump wanted to end the FBI investigation into supposed Russian influence in his campaign.

Those who had been promoting the probe,  including Comey, CIA chief John Brennan, FBI spy boss Peter Strzok (pictured at left) and Sen. John McCain, all knew that the inquiry had been largely based on a piece of opposition research of the sort that is well-known in the political underground of dirty tricks. It seems more than likely that Trump "smelled a rat" as the "investigation" continued. Importantly, the "dirty dossier" compiled on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee was not mentioned in Barr's letter, implying that Mueller found it to have low credibility.

If an investigation is pushed for political reasons   and has no bona fide right to exist, how can someone who tries to balk such a probe -- if that's what happened -- obstruct justice? The probe itself was tainted, poisoned from the start by a cabal who had obstructed due process of law in their attempt to fell Trump's presidency.

The head of the House judiciary committee, Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y., complained that Barr's letter raises more questions than it answers and announced Barr would be summoned to testify before Congress. Nadler's announcement said nothing about seeking Mueller's testimony.