President Trump said Friday he has answered Special Counsel Robert Mueller's questions in writing but still has not submitted them. He insisted he did it himself and answered them easily but added they may be designed to try to trick him and suggested the investigators may have "bad intentions."
“You always have to be careful answering questions for people who probably 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.”
He also took the press opportunity to attack the investigation, once again insisting there never should have been a "so-called investigation," there was "no collusion," and "the witch hunt never should have taken place."
Watch:
The president’s comments, which he made to reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a bill signing, came after his lawyers surprisingly postponed submitting the answers as they had planned to on Thursday. Rudolph W. 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.
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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.
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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.
Reporters also asked Trump about his angry tweets that seemed to come out of nowhere Thursday morning.
“I’m not agitated,” he said Friday. “It’s a hoax.”
Trump says he’s finished writing answers to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller (WaPo)