Joe Biden consoles daughter of ailing John McCain on ‘The View’

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is awarded the 2017 Liberty Medal by former Vice President Joe Biden at Independence Hall in Philadelphia this past October.

 (REUTERS/Charles Mostoller)

Former Vice President Joe Biden appeared Wednesday on ABC’s “The View,” where he offered words of encouragement to panelist Meghan McCain after she began crying while discussing her father’s battle with brain cancer.

Meghan McCain told Biden she hadn’t been able to get through his new memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” which centers on the 2015 death of Biden’s son, Beau, from an aggressive tumor called glioblastoma. Doctors diagnosed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., with the same type of tumor this past summer.

“I think about Beau almost every day and I was told that this doesn’t get easier but that you cultivate the tools to work with this and live with this,” Meghan McCain said, her voice breaking. “I know you and your family have been through tragedy I couldn’t conceive of.”

Biden, who served with John McCain in the Senate, stood up and moved from his seat on the set to sit next to her and hold her hand. He told Meghan McCain not to lose hope and that a medical breakthrough is possible.

“And it can happen tomorrow,” said Biden, who added, “there is hope, and if anybody can make it, your dad … her dad is one of my best friends … The thing that I found, and Beau insisted on and your dad’s going to insist on, is you’ve got to maintain hope. You have to have hope.”

A statement issued late Wednesday by the senator’s office said he’s at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland receiving treatment for the “normal side effects of his ongoing cancer therapy.” He looks forward to returning to work as soon as possible, the statement added

McCain, 81, underwent surgery in mid-July to remove a two-inch blood clot in his brain after being diagnosed with glioblastoma. He rebounded quickly, however, returning to Washington and entering the Senate on July 25 to a standing ovation from his colleagues.

But McCain’s condition has appeared to worsen in recent weeks. He suffered a minor tear in his right Achilles tendon, forcing him to wear a walking brace. McCain eventually began using a wheelchair with members of his staff pushing him where he needed to go.

As a Navy pilot, McCain lived through a July 1967 fire that killed 134 sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. The following October, his plane was shot down during a bombing mission over Hanoi. He spent more than five years as a prisoner of war. McCain also has survived several bouts with melanoma, a dangerous skin cancer.

Biden, 74, considered a run for the Oval Office in 2016, but decided against it, later citing the trauma of his son death keeping him from the race. During his “The View” appearance, Biden recounted his long friendship with John McCain and how McCain had befriended Beau many years earlier when he served as a Navy liaison officer to the Senate.

Biden also laughed while remembering their political clashes, with the two Senate heavyweights going toe to toe.

“Her dad goes after me hammer and tong,” Biden told the audience. But he also said that, even now, if he called John McCain and asked for help, he’d be there for him.

Meghan McCain thanked Biden later, tweeting she had no words to convey her “immense gratitude.”

“Your strength, hope and fortitude are an inspiration to me and so many others daily,” she wrote.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Justice Dept. Official Defends Mueller as Republicans Try to Discredit Him

Instead, Mr. Rosenstein mounted a step-by-step defense of Mr. Mueller’s conduct. He noted that department rules prevented Mr. Mueller from taking political affiliation into consideration when hiring for career positions, and he distinguished between officials holding political views and making investigative decisions out of bias. He said Mr. Mueller would be careful not to allow the latter.

“We recognize we have employees with political opinions. And it’s our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions,” Mr. Rosenstein said after Representative Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio, read out the names of members of Mr. Mueller’s team and political contributions they had made to Democratic causes.

“I believe that Director Mueller understands that, and he is running that office appropriately,” Mr. Rosenstein added.

Asked by Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who chairs the committee, why he remained satisfied with Mr. Mueller, Mr. Rosenstein replied:

“Based upon what I know, I believe Director Mueller is appropriately remaining in his scope and conducting himself appropriately, and in the event there is any credible allegation of misconduct by anybody on his staff, that he is taking appropriate action.”

Mr. Rosenstein’s stance signaled that despite the mounting assault on Mr. Mueller by Mr. Trump’s supporters, the fundamental dynamic surrounding the special counsel had not changed: If Mr. Trump were to try to fire Mr. Mueller based on any developments so far, the president would likely first have to fire or force the resignation of Mr. Rosenstein and then hunt for a replacement willing to carry out his orders, echoing Richard Nixon’s so-called Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal.

Republicans repeatedly pressed Mr. Rosenstein to appoint a second special counsel to investigate political partisanship in the department in its handling of the Trump-Russia investigation or in last year’s decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton with a crime over her use of a private email server while secretary of state — an idea that has been promoted heavily by commentators on Fox News and elsewhere in recent days.

Mr. Rosenstein said he could not appoint another special counsel without a credible allegation of a potential crime to investigate.

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The campaign against the special counsel, at the very least, provides a rallying cry for the president’s supporters to counter the drumbeat of news about Russian interference in the election and possible links to the Trump campaign. And a move by the Justice Department to show reporters the text messages that are the subject of an ongoing inspector general’s inquiry served to fuel the Republican campaign against Mr. Mueller.

Mr. Rosenstein confirmed that in addition to sending the messages to Congress the night before his testimony, the Justice Department had invited reporters to view the messages it was giving to lawmakers. That was a rare step, although officials in previous administrations have sometimes done so to avoid selective or misleading leaks from Capitol Hill.

On Wednesday, the deputy attorney general was pressed by Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, about who authorized the messages’ release. Mr. Rosenstein said that he had approved the step after consulting with the department’s independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz. His answers left ambiguous any distinction between merely providing them to lawmakers — who would essentially be free to leak them — and making them directly available to the news media.

“Our goal, congressman, is to make sure that it is clear to you and the American people that we are not concealing anything that’s embarrassing to the F.B.I.,” he said.

Ian Prior, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the texts were released in response to requests from lawmakers and after a review that determined that doing so would be lawful and ethical.

“The department ensures that its release of information from the department to members of Congress or to the media is consistent with law, including the Privacy Act,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Mueller, a registered Republican appointed by President George W. Bush to direct the F.B.I., has long had critics in the most pro-Trump corners of the House and the conservative news media. But in recent weeks, as his investigation has delivered a series of indictments to high-profile associates of the president and evidence that at least two of them are cooperating with the inquiry, those critics have grown louder and in numbers.

Moreover, the voices of doubt are no longer confined to the party’s far-right wing. They include Republican mainstays like Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

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“I was the lone voice in the wilderness, and now I have a robust chorus behind me,” said Representative Matt Gaetz, a first-term Florida Republican who has emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill.

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The president’s own legal team also appears to be part of the campaign. Jay Sekulow, one of Mr. Trump’s outside lawyers for matters related to the Russia investigation, told Axios that mounting evidence warranted the appointment of a second special counsel to look at conflicts of interest in the Justice Department.

In an interview, Mr. Sekulow cited a Fox News report that Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official, had been demoted for not disclosing meetings with officials from Fusion GPS, the investigative firm behind a controversial dossier of opposition research on the Trump campaign. Republicans have repeatedly charged that the F.B.I. may have relied on the dossier to obtain a warrant to secretly monitor Americans.

Republicans see further evidence of bias in an email sent by Andrew Weissmann, one of Mr. Mueller’s top deputies, in January telling the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, that he was “so proud and in awe” of her decision not to defend Mr. Trump’s travel ban in court.

Democrats say the pattern is becoming clear: As Mr. Mueller moves closer to Mr. Trump’s inner circle, Republicans try to discredit federal law enforcement and undercut the eventual findings of the special counsel. The Republican effort may also be intended to blunt the political repercussions should Mr. Mueller be fired, Democrats say.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, the Judiciary Committee’s senior Democrat, called the new Republican demands “wildly dangerous” to American institutions.

“I understand the instinct to want to give cover to the president,” he said. “I am fearful that the majority’s effort to turn the tables on the special counsel will get louder and more frantic as the walls continue to close in around the president.”

Perhaps more portentous is the restive Senate, a less partisan body where Mr. Mueller’s appointment in May was greeted with relief. Skepticism about the special counsel’s investigation is starting to take root there, too.

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“He’s got a tough job to do, but it seems he’s running far afield,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby, a long-serving Republican from Alabama. “Maybe it’s part of what he can do, but I thought he was going to investigate the Russian influence in the election, and it seems like he is going after a lot of other places, too.”

Mr. Graham, who a year ago was a leading Republican voice for a thorough investigation of Russian campaign interference, seems to have shifted his focus as well.

“I will be challenging Rs and Ds on Senate Judiciary Committee to support a Special Counsel to investigate ALL THINGS 2016 — not just Trump and Russia,” he wrote on Twitter.

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