Skip to main content

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had “nothing to hide” from the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and denied that his top lawyer had turned on him by co-operating with the probe.

Mr. Trump, in a series of tweets, denounced the New York Times for a Saturday story saying White House Counsel Don McGahn has co-operated extensively with the special counsel, Robert Mueller. The Times said Mr. McGahn had shared detailed accounts about episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice.

“I allowed him and all others to testify -- I didn’t have to,” Mr. Trump said in a tweet. Mr. Trump said the newspaper made it seem like Mr. McGahn had turned on the President -- as White House counsel John Dean had in the Watergate investigation of former president Richard Nixon -- “when in fact it is just the opposite.”

As White House counsel since the beginning of the Trump administration, Mr. McGahn could have rare insight into the President’s thinking.

His lengthy testimony – 30 hours over three voluntary interviews, according to the Times – could be crucial in determining whether the President acted with an improper, or “corrupt,” intent when he took actions like firing former FBI director James Comey, legal experts said. That is a key part to an obstruction of justice case.

Citing a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter, the Times said Saturday that McGahn had shared information, some of which the investigators would not have known about.

On Saturday evening, Mr. McGahn’s lawyer confirmed the White House Counsel had co-operated with Mr. Mueller’s team. “Mr. McGahn answered the special counsel team’s questions fulsomely and honestly,” William Burck said, explaining the President did not ask McGahn to refrain from discussing any matters.

Mr. Trump’s outside legal counsel, Rudy Giuliani, said Mr. McGahn’s co-operation would help bolster Mr. Trump’s claims that he did nothing wrong.

“The President encouraged him to testify, is happy that he did, is quite secure that there is nothing in the testimony that will hurt the President,” Mr. Giuliani said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Mr. Dean, who has criticized Mr. Trump in recent years, voiced support for Mr. McGahn. “McGahn is doing right!” he wrote on Twitter.

According to the New York Times, Mr. McGahn, in at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, described Mr. Trump’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which the President urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it.

Jens David Ohlin, a professor of criminal law at Cornell University, said that even if Mr. McGahn told investigators he thought Mr. Trump acted lawfully his testimony would still be pivotal.

“The McGahn interviews will add a lot of detail about what was happening behind the scenes and make Mueller’s account much fuller,” said Mr. Ohlin.

Mr. Trump denies his campaign colluded with Russia and has repeatedly attacked the probe as illegitimate.

On Sunday, he compared Mr. Mueller with 1950s-era U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy, whose anti-Communist crusade eventually led to his censure by the Senate.

“Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in a period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

The newspaper reported Mr. McGahn’s motivation to speak with the special counsel as an unusual move that was in response to a decision by Trump’s first team of lawyers to co-operate fully. But it said another motivation was Mr. McGahn’s fear he could be placed in legal jeopardy because of decisions made in the White House that could be construed as obstruction of justice.

The newspaper said Mr. McGahn was also centrally involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, which investigators might not have discovered without him.

Mr. McGahn cautioned to investigators he never saw Mr. Trump go beyond his legal authorities.

His testimony would be even more important if Mr. Trump does not sit for an interview with Mr. Mueller.

Mr. Giuliani said that discussions over a presidential interview continue with Mr. Mueller’s office and that he would not be rushed into having Mr. Trump testify “so that he gets trapped in perjury.”

In trying to make his argument with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Mr. Giuliani said “Truth isn’t truth,” to which Mr. Todd replied: “This is going to become a bad meme.”

Interact with The Globe