Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
UP FOR Mueller talk, Trump says.
Also, paper reports he asked FBI deputy how he voted in ’16
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump said that he’d be willing to talk under oath to special counsel Robert Mueller who is investigating whether anyone close to the president colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
“I would do it under oath. Absolutely,” Trump told reporters in a surprise appearance at a briefing Wednesday at the White House, and suggested that it might happen in two to three weeks.
Trump’s lawyers have been talking with Mueller and his aides about an interview with the president. The lawyers met last month with the special prosecutor’s team and have been speaking by phone as part of a continuing exchange over logistics that could take several weeks.
On Wednesday evening, Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer, said the president had been rushed while preparing to leave for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and intended only to emphasize that he remained committed to cooperating fully with the investigation and was willing to meet with Mueller.
Cobb added that the arrangements between Trump’s lawyers and the special counsel’s office were still being worked out.
As part of his investigation, Mueller is focusing on whether Trump obstructed justice when he removed his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and fired FBI Director James Comey, according to two U.S. officials.
The main topics of an interview would be those two decisions early in his presidency, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Trump also said he didn’t remember asking FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe who he had voted for in the 2016 election. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the president asked McCabe about his vote during an Oval Office meeting shortly after Comey was fired, citing several anonymous current and former U.S. officials.
McCabe’s wife, a Democrat, had received several hundred thousand dollars in donations from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for her unsuccessful Virginia state Senate bid in 2015.
McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter.
McCabe found the conversation with Trump “disturbing,” said one former U.S. official. Inside the FBI, officials familiar with the exchange expressed frustration that a civil servant would be asked how he voted and criticized for his wife’s political leanings by the president. One person said the Trump-McCabe conversation is of interest to Mueller.
McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received nearly $500,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton who chaired Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 run for president.
At the time of the donations, Andrew McCabe was assistant director of the FBI’s Washington field office, and he recused himself from investigations involving Virginia political figures. McCabe became Comey’s deputy in February 2016, by which time the election his wife lost had been over for three months.
But critics have questioned why he went on to oversee two critical cases related to Clinton — an investigation into her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and an inquiry into donations made to the Clinton Foundation. At the end of October 2016, as the election neared and the FBI faced intense public scrutiny over McCabe’s role, he recused himself from the Clinton investigations.
McCabe’s conduct is now the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and a report is expected in the spring.
Separately, top Democrats on Tuesday called on Facebook and Twitter to investigate what lawmakers said are Russian efforts to promote the release of a classified Republican memo criticizing the FBI probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign.
#ReleaseTheMemo and other hashtags have been trending on Twitter in recent days, and accounts affiliated with Russian influence efforts have been supporting this campaign, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a U.S. group that examines efforts by Russia and other nations to interfere in democratic institutions.
“If these reports are accurate, we are witnessing an ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process,” said a letter to Facebook and Twitter from Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats from California who are the top members of their party on the House Intelligence Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively.
Efforts to disclose the classified memo, prepared by Republican congressional staff members, have in recent days moved to the center of a sharply partisan debate over the actions of investigators probing Trump, his campaign and his associates. Some conservative lawmakers and prominent media personalities are pushing for the memo to be declassified and published to illuminate what they say have been improper actions by FBI and Justice Department officials. Information for this article was contributed by Ellen Nakashima, Josh Dawsey, Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, Sari Horwitz, Aaron Davis, Karoun Demirjian and Craig Timberg of The Washington Post; and by Jennifer Epstein and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News.