White House counsel Donald McGahn’s attorneys reportedly assured President Donald Trump’s lawyers that he doesn’t believe his lengthy interviews with Special Counsel Robert Mueller incriminated the president.
The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, reported that McGahn’s attorneys issued assurances in the wake of Trump’s legal team criticism of the New York Times article claiming his lawyers have little knowledge what McGahn told the special counsel.
Bill Burck, an attorney for McGahn, told the president’s attorneys over the past weekend that McGahn didn’t say that Trump is guilty of any wrongdoing during his interviews with Mueller’s investigators.
“He did not incriminate him,” Burck wrote in one email, according to the Post.
Rudy Giuliani told Fox News on Monday that former Trump attorney John Dowd “got a complete version of what McGahn said during that period of time,” while noting that he personally wasn’t aware of all the details McGhan told the investigators. “Now, I do,” he added, saying he went over the details in the recent days.
Despite the criticism of the media reports about McGahn’s interviews with the special counsel, Trump used the interviews to portray the White House as being cooperative with the investigation and as evidence that Mueller’s team is scrambling for evidence.
“Disgraced and discredited Bob Mueller and his whole group of Angry Democrat Thugs spent over 30 hours with the White House Counsel, only with my approval, for purposes of transparency,” Trump wrote in a tweet on Monday. “Anybody needing that much time when they know there is no Russian Collusion is just someone looking for trouble.”
McGahn reportedly had three lengthy interviews with the special counsel investigators since last November, who are investigating the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The White House counsel, who’s believed to have become a key witness in the probe, was asked by investigators about Trump’s private actions when he decided to fire FBI Director James Comey, publicly attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his failure to control the probe, and when he indicated willingness to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the Post reported.
Trump’s legal team was assured that McGahn told the special counsel that he didn’t witness the president committing any crimes and would have left his position if he had.
But Burck also warned that McGahn is merely a witness and he doesn’t know if Mueller has more evidence about any alleged wrongdoing by the president or if the information McGahn provided could be used in a broader case.