Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg went on a wild whirlwind tour of media outlets Monday, vowing to defy special counsel Robert Mueller’s subpoena and attacking former and current members of Trump’s team, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and former campaign director Corey Lewandowski. He also viciously lashed out at President Trump, saying, “I hate the guy.”
Nunberg, who has a history of being fired and rehired by Trump, was fired for good after racially charged social media posts surfaced in 2015.
The day began with the Washington Post reporting that special counsel Robert Mueller’s office had subpoenaed Nunberg to appear before a federal grand jury, but Nunberg was defying the order.
“Let him arrest me,” Nunberg told the Post, declaring that he plans to defy the subpoena and corresponding requests to hand over emails and text messages related to the Trump campaign and communications with current and former Trump advisers, including Roger Stone, Carter Page, and Steve Bannon.
“Mr. Mueller should understand I am not going in [to the grand jury] on Friday,” he said.
“Do you think I would ever talk to that moron?” Nunberg told CNN’s Gloria Borger later in the day, insisting in a later interview with Erin Burnett that he’s not “playing a game of chicken.”
“Let [Mueller] arrest me!” Nunberg told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“I’m not gonna get sent to prison,” he declared to Burnett. “Do you think Robert Mueller is going to send me to prison?” he asked.
“Whatever you told them, they said they will not charge you for?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he responded without expounding.
“Maybe I’ll just give them my password. My email password… then I would comply,” he suggested. “I’m not going answer questions in front of a grand jury if they do not explain to me why I have to go in there.”
Burnett confronted him about rumors he had been drinking or medicated. “I smell alcohol on your breath,” she said.
“I have not been drinking, no,” he said. Nothing else “besides my meds… anti-depressants, ok?” he explained.
Nunberg had harsh words for the president. “Trump fired me within six weeks of the campaign, by the way,” he said, insisting that he and Roger Stone saved the campaign after Trump criticized Sen. John McCain. “That was Roger and me,” he said.
“I didn’t steal from the campaign, ok? I didn’t have an illicit affair with a married man. All I did was work for him for four and a half years and now I get this crap,” he said, referring to the legal mess with the special counsel.
“Do you know the way I’ve been treated by Donald Trump? I hate the guy,” he said.
“I was told I was not going to get fired when those Facebook posts were released…. I was called that morning when Trump did the Sunday interviews… and then Trump called me afterward to tell me I was being fired… and he called me a low-level part-time consultant? I was being laughed at for years,” Nunberg complained. “He was like a father to me and he treated me like that when he fired me… and he let Corey Lewandowski and Hope Hicks collude.”
Of Corey Lewandowski, he said, “I despise Corey. If I could find Corey in an alley it wouldn’t be very nice.”
After White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders downplayed his role in the campaign, saying he had a “lack of knowledge” about its inner workings, Nunberg shot back: “She’s a joke. Okay, fine, yeah, she’s unattractive, she’s a fat slob. But that’s unrelevant [sic]. The person she works for has a 30-percent approval rating.”
“They [the special counsel] have something” on Trump, he warned. “People like Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, they’re going to be very embarrassed” by the revelations.
Nunberg fiercely defended former Trump campaign manager Roger Stone, suggesting that he’d be willing to fall on the sword for his friend. “I’m worried they’re trying to make a case against Roger Stone,” Nunberg said, suggesting that Stone could be in hot water over his communications with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange. “Roger did not do anything,” Nunberg said. “Roger was treated terribly by Donald Trump.”
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