President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is not worried — "at all" — about Attorney General Jeff Sessions having been interviewed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
"I'm not at all concerned," Trump said in the White House's Oval Office when reporters asked him about Sessions' recent sit-down with Mueller's team.
Trump also denied that FBI Director Christopher Wray threatened to resign if his administration forced out his deputy director, Andrew McCabe.
"He did not at all, he did not even a little bit," the president said of Wray's purported threat.
"He's going to do a good job."
Axios reported Monday night that Sessions had leaned on Wray to fire McCabe, a frequent target of Trump's ire because he is an ally of former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired last year.
Sessions then reportedly told White House counsel Don McGahn that Wray was upset over that pressure, and the attorney general then told McGahn it was not worth risking Wray's resignation over the issue.
On Tuesday morning, The New York Times reported, and CNBC soon after confirmed, that Sessions was interviewed for several hours by Mueller's office last week.
Comey was interviewed at the end of 2017 by Mueller's office, according to NBC News. The focus of the interview was memos Comey had written about his interactions with Trump as FBI director, according to a source cited by NBC News.
Mueller is probing not only Russian meddling in the election, but also whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice in connection with the Russia investigation.
Sessions recused himself from any probe of Russia after it was revealed that he had failed to disclose to Congress contacts he had during the 2016 campaign with Russia's ambassador to the United States.
Trump was angry over Sessions's recusal, reportedly because he wanted the attorney general to protect him in a probe.
After Sessions stepped aside in the case, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.
Mueller's probe has bedeviled the Trump administration for months.
The special counsel's team has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on a charger of working as an unregistered agent on behalf of the pro-Russia government of Ukraine, and obtained a guilty plea from former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn on a charge of lying to the FBI about his postelection conversations with Russia's ambassador.
Flynn is now cooperating with Mueller's investigation as a condition of his plea deal.
Trump denies any collusion by his campaign with Russia.