President says it ‘will make us look good and doesn’t matter’, before returning to internecine spats with swipe at John McCain

Donald Trump claimed on Saturday to have “told” House Republicans to vote for the Mueller report to be made public, as they did on Friday, because it would “make us all look good and doesn’t matter”.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be close to completing his investigation of Russian election interference, links between Trump aides and Moscow and possible obstruction of justice by the president.

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Democrats who control the House have pressed for the report to be released. Many observers have speculated that the attorney general, William Barr, a Trump appointee who before assuming the role was critical of Mueller’s work, will make good on his word and not do so. Justice department regulations say the report will remain confidential.

The unanimous vote on Friday was symbolic, designed to increase pressure on Barr.

The House judiciary chair, Jerrold Nadler, said the resolution was “critical because of the many questions and criticisms of the investigation raised by the president and his administration”.

The top Republican on the judiciary committee, Doug Collins of Georgia, voted for the resolution but asked: “What happens when it comes back and none of this is true,[when it shows] the president did not do anything wrong? Then the meltdown will occur.”

The White House ridiculed the resolution and Democratic efforts to have it passed by the Senate were rebuffed by the judiciary chair, Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally.

The president has repeatedly called the Mueller inquiry a “hoax” and a “witch-hunt”. On Saturday he again seemed to seek to undermine the gravity of Mueller’s work, tweeting: “On the recent non-binding vote (420-0) in Congress about releasing the Mueller Report, I told leadership to let all Republicans vote for transparency. Makes us all look good and doesn’t matter. Play along with the game!”

That “game” has included leading Democrats speculating in the media about what they will do if the report is not released. Nadler and Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, have floated calling Mueller to testify or subpoenaing the report itself.

Mueller, meanwhile, has jailed Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, and Trump’s former adviser George Papadopoulos, as well as two other people. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the former Trump deputy campaign chair Rick Gates have pleaded guilty and are co-operating with investigators.

Close Trump ally Roger Stone is among people and entities, including a number of Russians, who have been charged with wrongdoing.

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Later on Saturday, Trump returned to Twitter to complain about an infamous “dossier” about his links to Russia which was compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, and published by Buzzfeed in 2017. In doing so, he quoted a predecessor of Mueller as an independent investigator of a president and took a familiar swipe at John McCain, the Arizona senator and 2008 presidential candidate who died last year.

Quoting “Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel”, who led investigations into Bill Clinton, Trump wrote: “Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier ‘is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.’”

McCain gave the dossier to James Comey, the FBI director who was subsequently fired by Trump.

The senator, Trump wrote in reference to a Republican failure to dismantle the Affordable Care Act which hinged on McCain’s vote, “had far worse ‘stains’ than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!”

From the start of his run for the White House, Trump regularly attacked McCain, seeming to delight in the consternation it caused. He was not invited to the senator’s funeral.