President Trump fumed to aides and longtime friends last week after learning his Twitter feed had become a point of interest in special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice probe, according to sources close to the White House, some of whom said it was the angriest Trump had been since FBI agents raided the office of his personal attorney earlier this spring.
The revelation that Mueller and his team were looking through critical statements Trump had made on the social media platform about his own attorney general and former FBI Director James Comey came as a surprise to West Wing officials. They sometimes worry about the controversial nature of the president’s tweets, but they say they never saw them as potential evidence for a criminal investigation.
As one Republican close to the administration put it, “Some of [Trump’s] tweets have bit him in the behind, but this would take things to a new level entirely.”
In what many perceived to be a bit ironic, Trump lashed out at Mueller over the weekend with a series of indignant tweets about the probe and his own “nasty & contentious business relationship” with the special counsel, though he declined to provide details regarding the latter.
“Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump…,” the president wrote, adding that he previously rejected Mueller’s alleged bid to replace Comey as FBI chief (Mueller was Comey’s predecessor).
“He barely scratched the surface” in that tweet, said a former White House official, who claimed the president once spent hours complaining to aides about the time Mueller resigned his membership from Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., and subsequently requested a dues refund.
Giuliani told CNN on Monday that Trump was referring to a disagreement “that actually wasn’t settled even to this day,” adding that he was unaware of “any disqualifying conflict of interest” for Mueller.
A source familiar with the president’s thinking said he and Giuliani are on the same page when it comes to believing the leak about Trump’s tweets proved federal investigators are “grasping at straws.” However, the source conceded it was still unclear if Trump sided with his outside attorney on whether it would be wise for him to speak with Mueller about the tweets and firings, meetings, and deals that are being looked at by investigators.
“They both took it as a sign that Mueller’s wrapping up,” the source said, referring to Giuliani and Trump. “Rudy believes this will be over before the midterms and has been telling people as much for months now.”
[Related: Trump calls on Jeff Sessions to end Russia probe ‘right now’]
If the Mueller probe is winding down, a presidential interview will have to be decided on soon, and those in Trump’s orbit seem to overwhelmingly believe he’s better off refusing to sit for one. Behind-the-scenes negotiations between the president’s legal team and federal investigators remain ongoing, according to the former White House official, even as the president’s most outspoken lawyer revealed on Monday that he hadn’t heard from the special counsel’s team in more than a week.
“They haven’t gotten back to us in 10 days over our recommendations of how to do an interview,” Giuliani told CNN. “I’m sure they are in bad faith about an interview at this point.” He claimed the interview could still happen, though, because Trump “wants to do it so badly.”
“Right now, I’m telling him ‘no way,’” Giuliani added.
But a conversation between Trump and Mueller might not be the biggest concern currently for the president’s legal team. As Trump has continued to tweet away, seemingly unfazed by the potential legal jeopardy in which his public rants could further land him, his lawyers have been debating how to grapple with the increasingly likely chance that Cohen could help prosecutors build a case against the president or his allies by corroborating evidence they may have already gleaned from interviews, documents, congressional testimony, and public statements.
The longtime attorney, who spent years working for the Trump Organization and became a “fixer” for then-candidate Trump during his presidential campaign, sent a strong signal last week that he was willing to cooperate with Mueller and his team. According to CNN, Cohen recently told friends the president and his eldest son both lied about Trump’s knowledge of a June 2016 meeting at the president’s Fifth Avenue tower involving a woman with ties to the Russian government and her promise to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Trump was looped in and approved the meeting himself before the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, met with Don Jr., former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower, Cohen said. The president and other administration officials have repeatedly said he was unaware of the gathering until after it occurred.
With the Cohen feud intensifying, Trump and his team have begun ramping up their outbursts toward the special counsel, claiming the direction of Mueller’s investigation is unfair and his timeline too long. The former Trump campaign official said the president and his legal advisers feel buoyed by recent opinion polls showing the special counsel’s favorability rating reaching as low as 32 percent among all voters.
Their renewed outrage coincides with what Democrats have perceived as additional attempts by others to undermine the special counsel investigation, including a decision last week by Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mark Meadows, R-N.C., to file articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Mueller’s probe. The move has since gained the support of 11 House Republicans, most of whom belong to the conservative Freedom Caucus.
