President Donald Trump says he was "never going to fire" Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and that former White House counsel Don McGahn "may have been confused" when he told Mueller he'd been directed to have the acting attorney general remove him.
"The story on that very simply, number one, I was never going to fire Mueller," Trump told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in an extensive interview earlier this week. "I never suggested firing Mueller."
He also told Stephanopoulos that it "doesn't matter" what McGahn said in his testimony, and that he'd said what he did either "because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer, or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen — including you, including the media — that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest."
"And has to go," Stephanopoulos said, to which Trump replied, "I didn't say that."
McGahn, under Trump's instruction, is in the process of fighting a House Judiciary Committee subpoena to testify about his conversations with the president. He has already spent almost 30 hours with Mueller's teams, where he testified under oath and is extensively quoted through the special counsel's report.
Trump also during the interview defended his decision to not sit down for an interview with the Mueller team, because "they were looking to get us for lies or slight misstatements."
"I looked at what happened to people, and it was very unfair," said Trump. "Very, very unfair. Very unfair."