Trump Fumes Over Reports White House Counsel Is Cooperating With Mueller

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani attempts to clean up his widely mocked “truth isn’t truth” debacle.

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Continuing his stream of angry tweets from this weekend, President Donald Trump on Monday continued to reject reports that White House counsel Don McGahn has cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller. Insisting that he had given McGahn full permission to sit down for interviews with investigators, Trump also accused Mueller, whom he branded “disgraced and discredited,” and his team of attempting to sway the upcoming midterm elections.

The president’s tweets were provoked by a New York Times report this weekend revealing that during his three separate interviews with the special counsel’s investigation, McGahn has opened up extensively, likely out of concern that Trump may be prepared to throw him under the bus should any potential obstruction charges be filed. Subsequent reports indicated that Trump’s lawyers have found themselves in the precarious position of not knowing the full extent of McGahn’s cooperation or what he has told Mueller.

With Trump’s legal team scrambling to rebut the reports, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Sunday sparked widespread mockery for claiming “truth isn’t truth” while describing why he doesn’t believe Trump should sit down with Mueller. The former mayor of New York attempted to clarify his remarks on Monday with the following explanation:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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