President Trump dismissed concerns about his Trump Tower Moscow project in a recent interview and revealed that his lawyers were informed he is not a target of the Mueller investigation.
In an interview with the New York Times Thursday, Mr. Trump revealed that Deputy Attorney Rod Rosenstein spoke to his lawyers “a number of times” about the special counsel probe and told them that he was not a “target.”
“Well, he told the attorneys that I’m not a subject, I’m not a target,” he said.
However, Mr. Rosenstein did not tell the Trump legal team if the same were true for the investigation into the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has already pleaded guilty to multiple charges.
Mr. Rosenstein, who has overseen the Mueller investigation since former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself last year, announced in early January that he will be leaving the Justice Department in the coming weeks.
In November, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a project that the Trump Organization was working on in Moscow in the early months of the 2016 election.
Though there is no link between the Trump Tower Moscow project and the Mueller team’s central question of collusion with Russian agents, the project spurred talk of other legal or political conundrums for the president.
In the interview, Mr. Trump brushed off the project as unimportant.
“I had no money invested. It was a letter of intent, or option. It was a free option,” he said. “I don’t consider that even business.”
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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