President Trump speaks to the media on the South Lawn of the White House in July. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Trump reacted angrily Sunday to a new report that the White House counsel has cooperated extensively in the Russia investigation without Trump's full knowledge, calling it a “Fake Story” and comparing the probe to McCarthyism.
In a series of tweets, the president lashed out at a New York Times report that White House lawyer Donald McGahn had participated in three interviews with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that spanned 30 hours.
McGahn has offered detailed accounts of “episodes at the heart of the inquiry” over whether Trump and his aides sought to obstruct justice, the Times reported, motivated in part by the fear that the president might set him up to be held responsible.
The president suggested that McGahn had his full support to talk with Mueller.
Trump emphasized that he has authorized his aides to cooperate with Mueller. The president’s initial legal team had believed that strategy could bring a quick end to the probe. “I have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote in one tweet.
But the Times reported that McGahn was caught off guard by that decision and developed his own strategy to protect his own legal liability and demonstrate he had done nothing wrong.
“It is not clear that Mr. Trump appreciates the extent to which Mr. McGahn has cooperated with the special counsel,” the Times reported. “The president wrongly believed that Mr. McGahn would act as a personal lawyer would for clients and solely defend his interests to investigators, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.”
Trump compared Mueller's investigation to the tactics employed by the late senator Joseph McCarthy, who alleged that Communist agents and Soviet spies had infiltrated the U.S. government, accusing some of treason without evidence.
The president is spending the weekend at his resort here in Bedminster. He is due back in Washington on Sunday evening.
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