Mueller's White House investigation begins with Reince Priebus

Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus' lawyer, William A. Burck, confirmed with the New York Times on Friday that Priebus had been interviewed by an investigator from Robert Mueller's office. Thus far, the Times says that Priebus is the first senior administration official to be interviewed by the special counsel. Priebus was fired in July and replaced by former Secretary of Homeland Security, Gen.

John Kelly.

Other White House contacts

In an article titled: "Ex-White House Chief of Staff Is Interviewed by Special Counsel", it states that former Press Secretary Sean Spicer, current White House counsel Don McGahn and the Hope Hicks -- who is the White House communications director -- will also be interviewed by Mueller's office in the coming days. It also points out that the interview with Priebus was supposed to take place in recent weeks but, had been delayed because Mueller's office had not received all the necessary documents they had initially requested from the White House, before questioning him.

Because Priebus spent thousands of hours around Trump -- especially as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee -- the Mueller team is interested in getting details about what was said or occurred when the administration was considering firing the then FBI director James Comey. Last month, it was learned that the President had drafted a letter with White House aide Steven Miller, that initially disclosed their thoughts about why they wanted to fire Comey.

Detailing Priebus' involvement

Comey has described a particular moment of concerned when President Trump once cleared the Oval Office before he asked the director to "let go" of his investigation of former National Security Adviser Gen.

Michael Flynn. It's been suggested that Priebus was nearby when those events took place, which the investigator also asked him questions about. The article also said that Priebus was also asked about the visit of Russian officials to the White House and the incident at Trump Tower on June 9 of last year.

This was because another former campaign official, Paul Manafort -- who was manager of the Trump campaign during the primary, had been scheduled to meet with the RNC Chairman on the same day. The New York Times initially broke the story in July that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr, met with Russian officials at Trump Tower last year. Over the weekend that the story broke, Trump Jr, said that the meeting was to discuss adoption programs between the US and Russia.

But days later, it was learned that the meeting was actually set to obtain incriminating information against rival candidate Hillary Clinton. It was later learned that Don Jr's initial statement about adoption programs was in fact dictated by President Trump while he was on Air Force One. When that was learned, the President's legal team appeared to scramble to deny that they were involved in making the creation of the statement, pointing fingers to others. Hope Hicks and Sean Spicer were on the plane at the time and will reportedly be questioned about the incident.