Special counsel reportedly seeks to interview Trump about Flynn and Comey ousters
President Donald Trump/Frederic Legrand-COMEO (Shutterstock.com).
Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly seeking to interview President Donald Trump about his decisions to fire national security adviser Michael Flynn and FBI director James Comey, according to a report by the Washington Post.
Two unnamed sources tell the newspaper that lawyers for Trump are negotiating terms of the interview. The aim is for the president to answer some questions in person and to answer other questions in a written statement.
According to the Post, some advisers and friends of Trump worry about a special counsel interview because of the president’s “lack of precision in his speech and his penchant for hyperbole.” But Trump has reportedly told his lawyers he isn’t worried about an interview because he has done nothing wrong.
The article comes amid reports Tuesday that the special counsel’s office interviewed Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week and Comey last year.
According to the Post, the developments indicate that Mueller’s investigation “is intensifying its focus on possible efforts by the president or others to obstruct or blunt the special counsel’s probe.”
Flynn is reportedly cooperating after pleading guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s then-ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
Investigators who spoke with Comey reportedly asked about memos the then-FBI director wrote about his meetings with Trump, according to coverage on Tuesday by the New York Times. Comey has previously said his memos described Trump’s request for his loyalty and the president’s question about whether Comey could let go of the investigation into Flynn’s contacts with Russians.
Sessions said in Senate Judiciary Committee testimony in October that Trump had asked him and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to make a recommendation about Comey before the FBI director was fired. But Sessions would not confirm or deny whether Trump had mentioned the Russian investigation when discussing Comey’s firing.
