CNN analyst Phil Mudd: Barr will ‘crush’ Trump administration

A former FBI intelligence officer on Friday predicted that William Barr, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, could “crush” the administration in light of a BuzzFeed News report published Thursday suggesting the president told his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

AG nominee Barr “will be one of the most significant appointees the President has ever made. Barr … is going to crush the administration. The President is going to say ‘I never saw that one coming,’” fmr. FBI senior intelligence officer Philip Mudd says https://t.co/sF3XuqPfkq pic.twitter.com/au6GI2Ulm4

— New Day (@NewDay) January 18, 2019

“Barr will be one of the most significant appointments the president has ever made because Barr, I suspect, is going to crush the administration,” Phil Mudd said on CNN Friday.

{mosads}“The president’s going to say, ‘I never saw that one coming,’ ” Mudd, who is a frequent critic of Trump and the administration, added.

The comments come after BuzzFeed News published a report saying Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The two reportedly met at least 10 times to discuss the tower while Trump maintained to the public that he had no business ties in Russia.  

Barr, whose confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was held this week, suggested before the report came out that such behavior could be considered obstruction of justice.

“The president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction, is that right?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked, to which Barr responded, “Yes.”

Cohen admitted in November to lying to Congress about Trump’s Moscow property plans. He made the false statements while testifying before two congressional intelligence committees in 2017. He was sentenced in December to three years in prison on a string of charges, including lying to Congress.