Trump lawyer co-operates with Russian probe

WASHINGTON: The White House’s top lawyer has co-operated extensively with the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election, sharing accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the New York Times reported at the weekend.

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

On Saturday night, McGahn’s lawyer confirmed the White House counsel had co-operated with Muel- ler’s team. “Mr McGahn answered the Special Counsel team’s questions fulsomely and honestly,” William Burck said.

Also on Saturday, Trump tweeted that he had encouraged McGahn and White House staff to co-operate with investigators.

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

The newspaper reported 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 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.

McGahn, the newspaper said, shared information on Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of the FBI director, James Comey, and the president’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry.

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