LEGAL/PAUL MANAFORT/ROBERT MUELLER/RUDY GIULIANI/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “White House counsel Don McGahn’s 30 hours of conversations with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team have unnerved President Donald Trump, who didn’t know the full extent of McGahn’s discussions, two people familiar with his thinking said. The meetings only add complications to the already-fraught relationship between the President and the White House’s top lawyer. And as nervous aides await a verdict in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s trial and watch with trepidation the inauspicious public relations blitz carried by lead attorney Rudy Giuliani, uncertainty surrounding the President’s handling of the Russia investigation abounds. Trump was spending another weekend at his New Jersey golf club when The New York Times first reported McGahn’s cooperation with Mueller’s office, which is investigating Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. The President was unsettled by the notion that he didn’t know everything McGahn said to the special counsel during their interviews, the sources said. And while he had approved the cooperation, Trump did not know the conversations stretched for 30 hours or that his legal team didn’t conduct a full debriefing with McGahn after the fact.”
–Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak and Jeremy Diamond, “Sources: Trump unsettled by McGahn’s 30 hours with the special counsel,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, August 21, 2018 12:43 am