Trump has taken special comfort in the reassurances of White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who has offered Trump an optimistic view of the Russia probe, saying that he expects Mueller’s investigation to wrap up by the end of the year and that the White House has little to fear, said two White House officials with knowledge of the conversations.
After Mueller’s indictment of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump had a number of conversations with his attorneys and asked other advisers whether he was being served well, according to one of the White House officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Cobb — who initially said he hoped the probe would have concluded by Thanksgiving — has told Trump and other White House officials that Mueller’s investigators will have completed all of their interviews within two weeks and that the special counsel’s office is no longer requesting new documents, the White House official said. Then, Trump’s legal team has suggested, Mueller’s office could write a report clearing the White House.
Hanging out at Mar-a-Lago and at his South Florida golf clubs, Trump told friends, “This investigation’s going to be over with pretty soon,” adding that his attorneys, whom he praised as “brilliant,” had assured him of it, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
Cobb declined to detail his counsel to Trump. “At this stage on the investigation, I don’t want to interfere in the process of the special counsel or talk about any specific discussions that I’m having with the president,” Cobb said in an interview.
Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser, said: “There are plenty of us who believe the Mueller probe is a lot closer to an end than people think. . . . We’ve got a case where some people did some stupid things, and none of them involved anything as sinister as what the president’s been accused of.”
Some Trump aides and confidants worry about the president’s optimistic assessment of the situation, which he has repeated in conversations in recent weeks, waxing enthusiastically about how he’s eager to be out from under the Russia cloud by 2018.
[B
]One outside adviser to Trump warned that the president would “blow a gasket” if there was no statement of exoneration by year’s end.[/B]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...-1045pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.9273ca3b6cfd
