March 11, 2018

Trump Just Lashed Out at NYT’s Report on Turmoil in His Legal Team

“I am VERY happy with my lawyers,” the president tweeted.

Brian Cahn/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Sunday morning, President Trump once again took to Twitter to lash out at the New York Times. This time, his target was the paper’s report that he met with President Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, Emmet Flood, in the Oval Office last week to discuss hiring him to handle matters in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. 

Trump currently has White House lawyer Ty Cobb in charge of the inquiry, after his longtime personal lawyer Marc Kasowitz stepped aside last summer. Flood was one of a half-dozen top litigators Trump reportedly tried to hire to replace Kasowitz last year, but they all turned down the job. 

Maggie Haberman, the New York Times White House correspondent who co-wrote the story with Michael Schmidt, immediately responded.

Trump then turned his focus directly on Haberman, making good on the promise of the ellipsis that concluded his (at this point nine-minute-old) tweet.

Trump’s attacks come as he’s ignored his own lawyers’ advice to steer clear of the special counsel investigation. As recently as this week, Mueller learned that on at least two occasions Trump asked key witnesses about their conversations with investigators. In one case, Trump asked White House counsel Don McGahn to deny reporting that the president wanted him to fire Mueller last year, and on another occasion, Trump reportedly asked his former chief of staff Reince Priebus if his interviewers were “nice.”

Maggie Haberman responded:

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate