Trump: ‘Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter’

President Trump tweeted early Tuesday morning that “collusion is not a crime,” dismissing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.

“Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2018

Trump’s comment echoes the words of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who also said on Monday that collusion is not a crime. {mosads}

“I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime,” Giuliani said on “Fox & Friends.” “Collusion is not a crime.”

In a later interview on CNN, Giuliani again said he didn’t know that collusion was a crime.

“I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding about Russians,” Giuliani told CNN. “You start analyzing the crime — the hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay them for hacking.”

Mueller earlier this month indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 as he continues investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He is also probing whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and whether Trump has obstructed justice.

Trump, who has not faced any formal accusations in Mueller’s wide-ranging Russia probe, has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt” and said there was “no collusion.” 

Trump and Giuliani’s dismissal of collusion as a crime comes amid reports that Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen made audio recordings of his private conversations with the president. 

Cohen reportedly recorded 183 separate conversations, of which Trump is “discussed at any length” on 11 or 12, and is only recorded on one tape, according to Giuliani.

Some of those tapes have been turned over to federal officials as part of investigations into Cohen and Trump officials.

–Updated at 8:25 a.m.