Trump rattled by White House counsel’s cooperation with Mueller: report

President Trump reportedly did not know the full extent of White House counsel Donald McGahn’s cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller, which includes about 30 hours of conversations.

CNN, citing two people familiar with the president’s thinking, reported on Monday that Trump was upset after learning about the discussions McGahn had with Mueller’s team. The sources said Trump was unsettled by the possibility that he didn’t know everything that his counsel had said to Mueller’s legal team during the interviews.

The network noted that while Trump knew about the interviews, he was unaware that they totaled 30 hours. Trump also was reportedly angered by the fact that his legal team did not conduct a debriefing with McGahn after the interviews.

{mosads} 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill. 

The CNN report comes just days after the New York Times reported that McGahn discussed with Mueller’s team accounts of multiple episodes at the center of Mueller’s probe into possible obstruction of justice by the president.

McGahn has reportedly discussed the president’s dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey and his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of the special counsel, despite Sessions’s recusal from the Russia probe.

Trump bashed The New York Times report in a tweet on Saturday, saying he allowed McGahn “and all other requested members of the White House Staff, to fully cooperate with the Special Counsel.”

“In addition we readily gave over one million pages of documents,” he said. “Most transparent in history. No Collusion, No Obstruction. Witch Hunt!”

CNN reported that Trump was unnerved for the rest of the weekend and that he thought the development made him look weak. He also advocated for aides to portray his relationship with McGahn as strong, according to CNN.

Trump reiterated on Monday that he was aware of Mueller’s discussions with McGahn.

“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 said.