White House and Justice Department officials discussed Mueller report before release

By Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos and Katie Benner

WASHINGTON — Not all of Robert Mueller’s findings will be news to President Donald Trump when they are released Thursday morning.

Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming war over its findings.

A sense of paranoia is taking hold among some of Trump’s aides, some of whom fear Trump’s backlash more than the findings themselves, the people said. The report might make clear which of Trump’s advisers spoke to the special counsel, how much they said and how much damage they did to the president — providing a kind of road map for retaliation.

The discussions between Justice Department officials and White House lawyers have also added to questions about the propriety of the decisions by Attorney General William Barr since he received Mueller’s findings late last month.

Barr and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, determined that Trump did not illegally obstruct justice and said the special counsel found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference. Barr told lawmakers that officials were “spying” on the Trump campaign, raised ominous historical parallels with the illegal surveillance of Vietnam War protesters and declined to rebut charges that Mueller’s investigators were engaged in a “witch hunt.”

Spokespeople for the White House and the Justice Department declined to comment. Barr, who plans to hold a news conference at 6:30 a.m., PST, Thursday to discuss the special counsel’s report, refused to answer questions from lawmakers last week about whether the department had given the White House a preview of Mueller’s findings. Release of the report is scheduled for 8 a.m., PST.

Much is at stake for Barr in Thursday’s expected release, especially if the report presents a far more damning portrayal of the president’s behavior — and of his campaign’s dealings with Russians — than the attorney general indicated in the four-page letter he wrote in March. That letter generated anger among some members of Mueller’s team, who believed it failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry.