White House attorney Ty Cobb is pushing back on a report Thursday that President Trump’s attorneys are considering preemptively offering Special Counsel Robert Mueller an interview with Trump.
Politico reports that Trump’s legal team would offer the interview in order to help Mueller speed up his investigation, which began in May after the firing of James Comey as FBI director.
If Mueller has not sought an interview with Trump by Thanksgiving, Trump’s lawyers would consider volunteering the Republican for a meeting with the investigator, according to a senior White House official who spoke to Politico.
“Whatever happens with regard to whether or not, or how, the special counsel might want to interview the president, there’s no reason to expect that would be combative,” a senior White House official told Politico of the plan to put Trump before Mueller, a former FBI director.
But Cobb, who joined Trump’s White House legal team in July, denies that there has been any talk of Trump meeting with Mueller.
“There have been no internal or external discussions about this, whatsoever,” Cobb told The Daily Caller when asked about the Politico report.
“It’s somebody’s fantasy.”
Cobb says that Trump’s personal lawyers would be the ones who would negotiate with Mueller and his team of investigators. But he said that he is the only attorney working on the Russia case that communicates with Mueller’s office.
Cobb said that he’s not sure that Mueller will need to interview Trump as part of his investigation.
Cobb was brought in over the summer to handle matters involving Mueller’s investigation. Trump also has a team of private attorneys, including John M. Dowd and Jay Sekulow.
While any interview with Trump would be granted in hopes of removing the cloud of suspicion hanging over his presidency, meeting with Mueller could carry legal risks for the Republican.
“Nobody in the White House would be this stupid,” Cobb told TheDC.
Mueller is conducting an expansive investigation into Russia’s activities during the presidential campaign, as well as those of some of Trump’s associates. In addition to alleged collusion, Mueller and his team of nearly 20 investigators and attorneys are reportedly looking into the business dealings of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Mueller is also investigating the circumstances surrounding Comey’s May 9 firing as well as the White House’s response to a report in July about a Trump Tower meeting held between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russian lobbyists.
Mueller has reportedly interviewed several current and former White House aides in recent weeks about those issues.
