President Donald Trump denied reporting from the New York Times Tuesday that he called then-acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to try to install a Trump ally at the head of the Michael Cohen probe.
“No, not at all,” he told reporters Tuesday when asked if he had done that. “I don’t know who gave you that. That’s more fake news.”
He continued to talk about the abundance of fake news circulating and waxed lyrical about Whitaker’s person, saying that he is owed “a lot of thanks by our nation.”
Trump flatly denies the NYT reporting that he asked Whitaker to intervene in the Cohen probe pic.twitter.com/RX8HQUnym5
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) February 19, 2019
The Times reported that the President asked Whitaker to get Trump-friendly attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan to head the Cohen investigation, even though Berman had recused himself from the probe. Though there was no evidence that Whitaker directly intervened, he did conclude that he could not reverse Berman’s recusal, per the Times.
