President Donald Trump lashed out again at special counsel Robert Mueller on Sunday, comparing his investigation of Russian interference in U.S. elections to McCarthyism of the 1950s and denying that his own lawyer’s extensive cooperation with the probe invited comparisons to the Watergate scandal.
In a series of messages on Twitter, Trump responded to news reports that White House counsel Don McGahn sat for lengthy interviews with special-counsel investigators. McGahn, who has been involved in many sensitive matters in the Trump White House, spent 30 hours in three voluntary interviews, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump said he had given McGahn and other staff permission to “fully cooperate” and rejected the notion that he was unaware of the extent of the cooperation or that McGahn was sharing damning information. The New York Times, which reported earlier on the extensive cooperation, said McGahn and his lawyer, William Burck, had been perplexed by the president’s willingness to allow him to cooperate with the probe.
Trump criticized the Times report, which he said was “implying” McGahn was a “John Dean type ‘RAT.’ ” Dean served as White House counsel under former President Richard Nixon and became a key witness in prosecutors’ case against him during the Watergate scandal. The Times said it stood by its report.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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