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Trump’s Attack on Russia Inquiry Is From Familiar Playbook: The Clintons’

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Why Trump and Mueller aren't Clinton and Starr By Julian Zelizer

More than eight months after his election, President Trump still attacks Hillary Clinton, disparaging her campaign and accusing her of illegality. In his latest Twitter barrage on Saturday, he suggested again that the Justice Department should investigate “Crooked Hillary Clinton.”

But in one way, at least, Mrs. Clinton has become something of a role model for Mr. Trump. As he faces the sort of politically charged investigation that dogged Bill and Hillary Clinton when they were in the White House in the 1990s, Mr. Trump has consciously adopted a strategy from the Clintons’ playbook.

Much as the Clintons did, Mr. Trump is assembling a team of lawyers both inside and outside the White House to draw issues related to the investigation away from the rest of the West Wing. And he has embarked on a campaign to discredit the investigators before they can even get very far in their investigation, hoping to do to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, what the Clintons did to Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel.

Read entire article at NYT