President Donald Trump claimed Friday that he was 'transparent' with the special counsel, even though he didn't have to be, and allowed investigators to interview witnesses, who he says he didn't have to give provide any access to.
Trump said he's still deciding whether to let former White House Counsel Don McGahn testify on Capitol Hill, having already given him the go ahead to talk to Robert Mueller and his prosecutors for 30-odd hours.
'There has been no president in history that has given what I've given in terms of looking at just a total witch hunt. I call it the "Russian hoax." It turned out to be no collusion, no obstruction. It was a total hoax,' he claimed on Friday. 'And, yet, I was transparent. We gave 1.4 million documents. We gave hundreds of people.'
President Donald Trump claimed Friday that he was 'transparent' with the special counsel, even though he didn't have to be, and allowed investigators to interview witnesses, who he says he didn't have to give provide any access to
In addition to McGahn, Trump told reporters, 'I let him interview other people. I didn’t have to let him interview anybody. I didn’t have to give any documents. I was totally transparent because I knew I did nothing wrong.
'No collusion with Russia. Think of it: Thirty-five million dollars they spent, they wasted, over a period of two years. No collusion, no obstruction.'
Trump claimed he'd gone to extraordinary lengths to satisfy the special counsel as he hosted the prime minister of Slovak Republican in the Oval Office.
He complained about 'dishonest press' who 'go out of their way' tell lies about him.
'I want to see freedom of the press. And I get treated fairly by some press, but I get treated very unfairly by other press,' he claimed on press freedom day. 'And, frankly, I think that’s very dishonest.'
The U.S. president claimed, 'I want to see a free press. I mean, today I was happy to see on the front page of the New York Times -- for the first time -- where they were talking about spying and they were talking about spying on my campaign.
He said, 'That’s a big difference between the way they've been covering, but that’s a big story. That’s a story bigger than Watergate, as far as I'm concerned.'
Trump claimed Thursday that it's likely former FBI Director James Comey led an effort to spy on his campaign in 2016.
And he told a Fox News Channel interviewer that he intends to declassify documents related to controversial surveillance warrants 'pretty soon.'
White House officials have vented both publicly and privately for more than a year about warrants the Obama Justice Department obtained from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to monitor Carter Page, then a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.
The president signaled Friday morning that a reckoning was near.
'Finally, Mainstream Media is getting involved - too “hot” to avoid,' he tweeted, citing a front-page New York Times story about 'effort to spy on Trump Campaign.'
