Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and interim White House communications director Hope Hicks are among the six individuals special counsel Robert Mueller and his team are interested in interviewing about events that are part of Mueller’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a report.
Mueller has told the White House he and his team are interested in interviewing Priebus, Spicer and Hicks, as well as White House counsel Don McGahn, senior associate counsel to the president James Burnham, and Josh Raffel, who works in the Office of American Innovation with Jared Kushner.
Hicks, McGahn, and Raffel currently work at the White House. Priebus and Spicer resigned several weeks ago, though Spicer’s last official day was last week.
The six current and former White House aides may have details on events Mueller is investigating as part of the Russia probe, including President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey in May and the White House’s decision not to heed warnings from the Justice Department about former national security adviser Michael Flynn, according to the Washington Post.
Trump fired Flynn in February after it was revealed he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials.
Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer, told the Washington Post he doesn’t comment on matters related to Mueller’s probe and declined to comment on behalf of Hicks, McGahn, Burnham, and Raffel.
“Out of respect for the special counsel and his process and so we don’t interfere with that in any way, the White House doesn’t comment on specific requests for documents and potential witnesses,” Cobb said.
Spicer, McGahn, and Burnham may have information related to Flynn, according to the report.
McGahn and Burnham talked with former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in January, after Trump’s inauguration, about the Justice Department and FBI’s concerns about Flynn, including that he may have been compromised by Russian officials and had conversations with former Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in December.
Spicer, meanwhile, had details of how the White House handled its response to Flynn and his conversations with top Russian officials.
Priebus, too, may be privy to information about Flynn, as well as Trump’s decision to fire Comey, as the former FBI director told the Senate Intelligence Committee in June that Priebus was one of several aides Trump asked to leave the Oval Office after a meeting in February. Comey said during that encounter with Trump, after Priebus and others left, the president asked him to drop the bureau’s investigation into Flynn.
Hicks and Raffel both took part in internal discussions in July about the White House’s response to news that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, attended a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, after he was promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton, according to the Washington Post.
The statement about the Trump Tower meeting ultimately released by the White House said the meeting focused on the issue of American adoptions of Russian children, and did not mention Trump Jr. had been promised harmful information on Clinton.
CNN reported Thursday that Mueller wanted to speak to Trump aides who helped draft the White House’s response.
In addition to potentially having knowledge of internal conversations related to the Russia probe, the aides may also be tied to internal documents Mueller’s team asked the White House to turn over, sources were quoted as saying.
The White House also expects Mueller and his team to interview members of the Trump family, including Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser at the White House.
No interviews have been scheduled yet, according to the Washington Post, and sources said Mueller is waiting to receive internal documents.
