After the ouster of his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this week, President Donald Trump has now decided to remove his National Security Adviser HR McMaster and is actively discussing potential replacements, The Washington Post reported late on Thursday.
But the White House has promptly denied the report, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeting that there are “no changes” on the anvil at the National Security Council.
“Just spoke to @POTUS (President Trump) and Gen. H.R. McMaster – contrary to reports they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC,” Sanders tweeted hours after the Post report, which was also separately confirmed by The Wall Street Journal.
The Post report, citing people with knowledge of the plans, said that Trump “is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up”. It went on to say that the shake-up could include some more senior officials at the White House.
The possible exit of McMaster, much like that of Tillerson, has been in the air for quite some time. The speculation intensified last month when Trump publicly chided McMaster for telling an international conference in Munich that evidence of Russian meddling in the US election was now “incontrovertible” with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals.
Trump’s grouse was that McMaster failed to point out that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia. “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H (Hillary Clinton), the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and the Dems,” Trump said in a tweet at the time.
Trump, according to the Post, has complained that McMaster was “too rigid” and that his briefings “go on too long and seem irrelevant”. The report went on to say that possible replacements for McMaster included former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and NSC Chief of Staff Keith Kellogg.
Amid the changes of top officials, Special Counsel Robert Mueller appeared to be expanding his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election by subpoenaing Trump Organisation in recent weeks to turn over documents related to Russia and some other matters he is investigating.
Citing people briefed on the matter, The New York Times reported that the order was “the first known instance of the special counsel demanding records directly related to President Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the president”.
Analysts view Mueller’s action as a possible widening of his probe, whereas sources to Trump have for the past couple of months have been quoted as saying that the Special Counsel was in the process of wrapping up his investigation.
The Trump Organisation, however, tended to dismiss The Times report, saying that for the past several months now, it has been turning over documents in response to requests from the Special Counsel. An attorney for the company told The Associated Press that the Trump Organisation has been “fully cooperative” with Mueller’s investigation since July 2017.