March 11, 2018

Trump Just Lashed Out at NYT’s Report on Turmoil in His Legal Team

“I am VERY happy with my lawyers,” the president tweeted.

Brian Cahn/Zuma

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On Sunday morning, President Trump once again took to Twitter to lash out at the New York Times. This time, his target was the paper’s report that he met with President Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, Emmet Flood, in the Oval Office last week to discuss hiring him to handle matters in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. 

Trump currently has White House lawyer Ty Cobb in charge of the inquiry, after his longtime personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz stepped aside last summer. Flood was one of a half-dozen top litigators Trump reportedly tried to hire to replace Kasowitz last year, but they all turned down the job. 

Maggie Haberman, the New York Times White House correspondent who co-wrote the story with Michael Schmidt, immediately responded.

Trump then turned his focus directly on Haberman, making good on the promise of the ellipsis that concluded his (at this point nine-minute-old) tweet.

Trump’s attacks come as he’s ignored his own lawyers’ advice to steer clear of the special counsel investigation. As recently as this week, Mueller learned that on at least two occasions Trump asked key witnesses about their conversations with investigators. In one case, Trump asked White House counsel Don McGahn to deny reporting that the president wanted him to fire Mueller last year, and on another occasion, Trump reportedly asked his former chief of staff Reince Priebus if his interviewers were “nice.”

Maggie Haberman responded:

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Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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