He also misspelled “counsel” as “councel.”

“With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special councel appointed!” Trump wrote. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

Thursday was not the first time Trump has made baseless claims without providing any evidence. Trump helped launch his political career by claiming — incorrectly — that Obama was not born in the United States, and as president he asserted on Twitter, again with no evidence, that the Obama administration had wiretapped his campaign headquarters.

But Trump's missives on Twitter — where the president most frequently turns to express his sense of grievances — not only underscore that he disagrees with his own Justice Department, but undercut claims by his own aides Wednesday that he had processed the news with grace and calm.

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One senior White House official who was present when Trump was informed of the Justice Department's decision to appoint as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a former prosecutor who served as the FBI director from 2001 to 2013, described Trump as “unbelievably calm and measured.”

“I expected him to be ranting and raving, but he was like, 'Fine, let them do what they have to do, but we'll be focused on our agenda,'" said the official, who requested anonymity to describe the private talks.

Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement that he had appointed Mueller to investigate possible interference in the 2016 presidential election because he believed it was in “the public interest.”

And in a statement Wednesday evening, Trump offered a more measured outlook, saying, “As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity.”