It doesn’t take a genius to know that Donald Trump attacks the Mueller investigation when it gets too close to home. So what kicked off Trump’s latest two days of hissy fits? The New York Times report that White House counsel Don McGahn has been cooperating with the Mueller investigation, which led to the realization that Trump’s personal lawyers don’t know what he’s said.
McGahn has done 30 hours of interviews with the special counsel’s team. THIRTY. He went into them believing that Trump’s lawyers were trying to set him up as the fall guy for any wrongdoing the investigation uncovered, and with permission—thanks to Trump’s lawyers at the time, who decided to have Trump waive attorney-client privilege for McGahn’s interviews—to speak freely. And then:
Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck, gave the president’s lawyers a short overview of the interview but few details, and he did not inform them of what Mr. McGahn said in subsequent interactions with the investigators, according to a person close to Mr. Trump.
The Saturday Times report about the extent of McGahn’s cooperation with the investigation was apparently the first time it occurred to Trump or his current lawyers that they didn’t know what McGahn had said. Trump’s current lawyers are going with the strategy of firmly asserting that McGahn helped Trump … whatever it was he said, which they don’t know. But a quick glance at Trump’s Twitter feed shows just how rattled he is.