President Donald Trump challenged statements on Friday that White House employees made, as detailed in the Robert Mueller report.
“Because I never agreed to testify, it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the ‘Report’ about me, some of which are total bullshit & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad),” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump did not detail which statements by which people he was challenging, but it was clear he was upset by parts of the report that included meeting notes. He challenged them as “fabricated & totally untrue.”
The report reveals that Trump was correctly suspicious of notetaking by his White House counsel, Don McGahn, and others.
The report shares a conversation between McGahn and his habit of taking notes:
The President then asked, “What-about these notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” McGahn responded that he keeps notes because he is a “real lawyer” and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing. The President said, “I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes.
Notes from Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, Jody Hunt, revealed in the report that Trump was deeply disturbed by the news that a special counsel was appointed to the Russia investigation.
The report reads:
According to notes written by Hunt, when Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.” The President became angry and lambasted the Attorney General for his decision to recuse from the investigation, stating, “How could you let this happen, Jeff?”
On Twitter, Trump cast doubt on the veracity of the notes.
“Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” he wrote: