WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Friday said he has answered a set of questions from special counsel Robert Mueller "very easily," while his lawyers signaled that the president expects to turn over his written answers in the coming days.
Trump stressed that he has been "busy" and it has taken some time to complete them, but also expressed his concern about Mueller's purpose in obtaining them.
"You always have to be careful answering questions for people who have bad intentions," he said of the team Mueller has assembled to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election and any possible coordination with Trump's campaign. "I haven't submitted them. I just finished them."
The president's comments, which he made to reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a bill signing, came after his lawyers postponed submitting the answers as they had planned to Thursday. Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, told The Washington Post that the legal team was still deciding whether some of Mueller's questions they agreed to answer in September would cause legal problems for the president.
According to people familiar with the delay, Trump's lawyers believe they have now resolved the problem they faced.
Trump stressed Friday that he answered the questions personally, not his lawyers.
"My lawyers aren't working on it. I'm working on it," Trump said. "My lawyers don't write the answers."
The president has met with lawyers nearly every day this week in sessions to review his answers, including a four-hour session Wednesday that was frequently interrupted by other business. Trump spent more than four hours meeting with his attorneys Monday, broken up by phone calls the president had to take, and 90 minutes Wednesday night, according to people familiar with the sessions.
Trump also was asked Friday about his recent tweets where he called the Mueller investigation "illegal" and said, without evidence, that Mueller's team was shouting at defendants.
"I'm not agitated," he said. "It's a hoax."
The questions, roughly two dozen that focus on five topics, all predate Trump winning the election. Trump's lawyers have not yet agreed to answer a larger set of questions that relate to Trump's time as president-elect and then as president, Giuliani said.
"There are some that create more issues for us legally than others," Giuliani said Thursday. He said some were "unnecessary," some were "possible traps," and "we might consider some as irrelevant."
Giuliani said the special counsel has not imposed a firm deadline, but he added that Trump's answers could be submitted Friday. Another person familiar with the effort said they expect Trump to turn over the answers before Thanksgiving.
After a relative lull in the run-up to the midterm elections, the Russia probe has returned to the forefront of Washington conversation and cable news chyrons. There has been widespread media coverage of two Trump allies -- Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi -- who say they expect to be charged.
The president has expressed concerns privately that Mueller is closing in on his inner circle, including potentially his eldest son.
For months, Trump has told confidants he fears that Donald Trump Jr., perhaps inadvertently, broke the law by being untruthful with investigators in the aftermath of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, according to one Republican close to the White House.
Trump has also complained about efforts in the Senate by Arizona's Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, to introduce legislation to protect the special counsel, according to the officials and Republicans.
Democrats have called for the special counsel bill to be added to a year-end spending bill that must pass in December to avoid a partial government shutdown. The bipartisan legislation, introduced more than a year ago, would give any special counsel a 10-day window to seek expedited judicial review of a firing and put into law existing Justice Department regulations that a special counsel can only be fired for good cause.
On Wednesday, Flake said he would not vote to confirm judicial nominees unless GOP leaders hold a vote on the Mueller protection legislation.
Additionally, Trump has told confidants in recent days that he is deeply frustrated by widespread criticism of his choice of Matthew Whitaker for acting attorney general, according to four officials and Republicans close to the White House who spoke on condition of anonymity. Whitaker has been a vocal opponent of the special counsel investigation.
But Whitaker told Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in a meeting this week that Mueller's investigation would be allowed to proceed, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The person wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York and other Democrats have called for Whitaker to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation.
A Justice Department spokesman said earlier this week that Whitaker will follow department protocols and consult with senior ethics officials "on his oversight responsibilities and matters that may warrant recusal."
THE MANAFORT CASE
Meanwhile, Mueller and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort asked for a brief delay before updating a judge about Manafort's cooperation in the Russia investigation, saying they will have more to report in 10 days.
Lawyers in the case were supposed to submit a status report Friday but asked U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington for an extension until Nov. 26. They didn't explain why, saying in a brief filing on Thursday that they will then submit "a report that will be of greater assistance in the court's management of this matter."
Nothing else in the two-paragraph document indicates what, if anything, may be happening in the next 10 days. But the filing could suggest that Manafort's cooperation with Mueller may be nearing a critical point.
Mueller and Manafort said "the parties have been meeting" since the last court hearing on Sept. 14.
Early Friday, the judge granted the joint request.
Manafort was convicted by a jury in August of bank and tax fraud in Alexandria, Va. He then pleaded guilty to additional charges in Washington a month later, agreeing to cooperate with Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Separately, House Republicans who have spent the past two years arguing that there was bias in President Barack Obama's Justice Department are preparing to subpoena two key witnesses in the final weeks of their majority -- former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., has notified colleagues that he will subpoena Comey for a private deposition Nov. 29 and Lynch for Dec. 5, according to a person familiar with the subpoenas. The person declined to be identified because the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The subpoenas are part of an investigation by two GOP-led committees into decisions made by the Justice Department during the 2016 election, when Democrat Hillary Clinton was cleared in an inquiry into her email use and department officials launched an investigation into Trump's campaign and Russia. Both Comey and Lynch still had their jobs during that time.
Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform panels have argued that Justice Department officials were conspiring against Trump's election, and they have interviewed multiple current and former Justice officials privately in an effort to prove their case.
It's unclear if Comey and Lynch will appear, or if Republicans would be able to enforce the subpoenas, since they lose the House majority in January. Goodlatte and the chairman of the oversight panel, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, are both retiring.
Democrats have strongly objected to the GOP inquiry, saying it is an effort to undermine Mueller's investigation.
New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the committee and its likely incoming chairman, said in a statement that Comey and Lynch had both indicated a willingness to answer the Republicans' questions voluntarily.
"These subpoenas are coming out of the blue, with very little time left on the calendar, and after the American people have resoundingly rejected the GOP's approach to oversight -- if, indeed, 'oversight' is the word we should use for running interference for President Trump," Nadler said.
Information for this article was contributed by Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post; by Mary Clare Jalonick, Mike Balsamo, Jonathan Lemire, Catherine Lucey and Eric Tucker of The Associated Press; and by David Voreacos of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 11/17/2018