WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump said Friday that he's finishing up written answers to questions posed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in the Russia probe, a potential milestone in the long-running investigation.
Trump's responses, once submitted to Mueller's team, would represent the president's first official comment to prosecutors in an investigation that has drawn guilty pleas from several of his former top aides and cast a shadow over the White House.
"I'm working on them," Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about Mueller's questions.
A person familiar with the process, who declined to speak publicly about the closed-door preparation, said Trump was close to completing his answers.
The president said he was handling the issue cautiously because "you always have to be careful answering questions for people who have bad intentions."
Trump has repeatedly blasted the Russia investigation as a witch hunt and tweeted earlier this week that Mueller's team was "a disgrace to our Nation."
Trump has met with his legal team multiple times this week, but he told reporters that he's handling the answers himself.
"My lawyers aren't working on it," he said. "I'm working on it. My lawyers don't write the answers."
The specific questions posed by Mueller's team have not been made public.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who is representing the president, told The Washington Post on Thursday that all the topics involve events before the 2016 election.
Trump has denied any conspiracy with the Russians, who hacked Democratic Party emails and spread disinformation on social media to boost his campaign against Hillary Clinton.
Mueller has indicted or secured guilty pleas from 32 individuals and three companies since last year, when he began leading the investigation.
The group includes four former Trump advisers, 26 Russians, three Russian companies, one California man and a former London-based lawyer.
Trump's former lawyer also pleaded guilty in New York in a separate criminal case arising from the Russia investigation.
