The White House believes special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election will come to an end soon, and until that happens, the administration will remain "supportive and cooperative," principal deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah said Tuesday.
"We've been supportive and cooperative of this process and we believe it will end soon, and finally as we've known all along, which is there was no collusion during the 2016 campaign and no findings of wrongdoing," Shah told Fox News' "Happening Now."
His comments came as news broke that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had sat for an interview with Mueller. However, he would not comment on details of Sessions' meeting, or other witnesses.
"I'm not aware of the details concerning it," he said. "We've been cooperative as the White House and administration and we believe the special counsel will find what we already know."
Shah also discussed lawmakers' vote to pass a short-term spending bill ending the government shutdown, saying that Democrats, particularly Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "blinked" while negotiating.
"Chuck Schumer and the other Democrats were offered a solid bill on Friday," said Shah. "It was to keep the government open for about four weeks to pay our military, to pay our first responders, and also to extend children's health insurance.
"They rejected that deal on Friday and got put into an untenable position of saying they wanted unrelated legislation about immigration reform to be a part of any effort to keep the government open."
By doing that, Democrats put the interests of 600,000 "illegal immigrants over the interests of hundreds of millions of law-abiding American citizens who need national security, who need basic government services," said Shah.
"They are in an untenable position and voted to reopen the government just a few days later."
He said he is also as confused as anyone else about what Schumer's motives were for the shutdown.
"We've heard a lot about how the president may have not been as vocal or forward leaning in some of these measures, but he got the job done in three days without holding any press conferences," said Shah. "Schumer had three and got nothing for it. We believe it was handled the right way."