/Trump asked the Australian prime minister to help investigate Mueller probe origins

Trump asked the Australian prime minister to help investigate Mueller probe origins

President Donald Trump sought help from the Australian prime minister to investigate the origins of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, a Justice Department official told NBC News on Monday.

The call to Scott Morrison, the Australian leader, came recently after Attorney General William Barr in May asked John Durham, the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, to lead an inquiry into whether the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was properly predicated. The DOJ official said Barr asked Trump to make the call to seek Australia’s help.

An administration official described the call as a routine call between two heads of state ahead of state seeking the assistance of another country’s law enforcement agency. It was “asking his law enforcement to work with ours,” the official said.

The report comes amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry stemming from allegations that Trump pushed the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The New York Times first reported this story. The official, however, said the department had an issue with the Times describing Trump’s call as pushing the Australian prime minister.

“The wasn’t a push,” the DOJ official says. “This was an ask.”

Trump’s call with the Australian leader also raises additional questions about Barr’s relationship with Trump since the Justice Department has long maintained its independence from the presidency. A declassified whistleblower complaint at the center of the impeachment inquiry, released last week, claimed that Trump sought to use Barr to assist Ukraine in investigating Biden. The Associated Press reported on Sunday that when Barr learned he had been lumped into the conversation he was “surprised and angry.”

Barr has also been lobbying foreign governments, such as the U.K. and Italy, to help in the administration’s efforts to reexamine the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to The Washington Post.

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A spokesperson for the Australian government told NBC News in a statement that the country has regularly been open to working with the U.S.

“The Australian Government has always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts that help shed further light on the matters under investigation,” the spokesman said. “The PM confirmed this readiness once again in conversation with the President.”

Former FBI director Robert Mueller took over the investigation into Russian meddling and potential links with the Trump campaign in May 2017 following the abrupt firing of former FBI director James Comey.

Mueller submitted his report this past March and testified in front of Congress in July. His report noted that a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, had gone to a London bar to have drinks with an Australian diplomat in May 2016.

While there, Papadopoulos reportedly told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, that he’d heard that Russia had thousands of emails that would embarrass Trump’s presidential rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The Australian government then reported Papadopoulos’ remarks to the FBI. That sparked a nearly two-year investigation spanned the globe and roiled the Trump administration.

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