Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking to interview six White House advisers including acting communications director Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, people familiar with Mueller’s request told The Washington Post on Friday.
Meanwhile, Politico reported Friday that Mueller is planning to interview “up to a dozen White House aides” in the coming weeks, and cited a source who said the current aides Mueller is seeking to talk to are not all “the marquee names you would think” — adding that he could start by interviewing lower-level staffers and then working his way up.
The reports follow CNN’s exclusive reporting Thursday that Mueller has discussed with the White House interviewing aides in his investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Three sources familiar with the conversation told CNN that the special counsel has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted.
The interviews with White House staffers who were aboard Air Force One have not begun, the sources told CNN Thursday.
On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Mueller is also interested in the conversations surrounding the President’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, as well as the White House’s initial response to discovering that former national security adviser Michael Flynn withheld details of his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the US.
CNN’s sources said that Mueller’s interviews currently involve only a small number of people, but they cautioned that number could increase. At this time, Mueller has not asked to interview President Donald Trump himself.
Trump Jr. was on the Hill Thursday for an interview with the Senate judiciary committee.