President Donald Trump last June ordered Special Counsel Robert Mueller fired but backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than follow his directive, The New York Times reports.
The Times cited four people told of the matter but there were no immediate responses to requests for comment from White House lawyers and press officials.
Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, learned of the incident in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in an inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice, the Times reported.
Amid media reports that Mueller was looking into a possible obstruction case, Trump argued that the former FBI director had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the probe, two of the people said, according to the Times.
First, Trump said that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, had led Mueller to resign his membership, the newspaper reported.
