White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on Monday President Trump is “not afraid” to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller but has declined to do so.
“He’s not afraid to sit down,” Conway told reporters. “It just doesn’t seem necessary. It doesn’t rise to that level.”
{mosads}Trump on Friday said that he has completed answering written questions for Mueller’s Russia probe, but has not yet submitted them.
“His attorneys have … counseled him that he should submit those answers in writing and he has,” Conway said on Monday.
Trump’s written answers come after months of negotiations between the president’s legal team and Mueller as the special counsel investigates possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
But Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told The Washington Post last week that he finds some questions problematic.
“There are some that create more issues for us legally than others,” Giuliani said. He called some of the questions “unnecessary,” others “possible traps” and several “irrelevant.”
The president has so far declined a face-to-face interview with Mueller, and his lawyers have said he will not answer questions about whether he sought to obstruct the original Russia probe.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns that Trump’s newly appointed acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker could seek to undermine Mueller’s probe.
Whitaker has publicly made comments criticizing the special counsel’s investigation and once said the attorney general could stifle Mueller’s work by limiting his budget.
Whitaker has since reportedly told associates that he would not roll back Mueller’s funding.
Trump during an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace on Sunday said that he would not step in if Whitaker tried to curtail the investigation.
“I would not get involved,” Trump said.
Senate Democrats on Monday filed a lawsuit challenging Whitaker’s appointment, marking the fourth legal action against the new acting attorney general.