Soon after the Justice Department released special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report, President Trump asked former White House counsel Don McGahn to publicly state that he did not view an order to dismiss Mueller as obstruction of justice.

Sources told the Wall Street Journal that McGahn declined the request delivered by current White House special counsel Emmet Flood.

“We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister. It was a request, professionally and cordially made," McGahn's lawyer, William Burck, said in a statement.

In a follow-up, the New York Times reported McGahn also declined a request to publicly say he believed there was no obstruction before the Mueller report was released. The Times reported that Trump's lawyers saw that Mueller's report left out that McGahn told investigators that he did not believe obstruction of justice had taken place as Burck had told them months earlier.

The White House has yet to react to the news reports.

In the 448-page report, released last month with redactions, Mueller details 10 instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, including ordering McGahn to fire Mueller. The report said McGahn resisted and went so far as to pack up his belongings at the White House and inform his chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, to tell her of the decision. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus, however, pushed him not to quit, and McGahn did not leave his post at the White House until late 2018.

Another instance of possible obstruction examined said that following media reports in January 2018 — which the president said were “fake news” — that said Trump directed McGahn to have Mueller fired, the president attempted on multiple occasions to have McGahn deny he was told to do so. The report said McGahn shrugged off a request from the president to write a letter disputing he was ordered by Trump to fire the special counsel and told the president during an Oval Office meeting that press accounts were accurate.

Mueller declined to say either way whether Trump committed a crime, citing a Justice Department guideline that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Democrats argue that Mueller's report leaves the obstruction question up to Congress to investigate and decide.

Trump tweeted last month that he never told McGahn to "fire" Mueller and that if he wanted, he "could have done it" himself.

McGahn cooperated with the special counsel’s team, sitting down for several interviews over 30 hours.

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed McGahn last month, seeking his testimony and documents relevant to its investigation into possible obstruction of justice by Trump. However, the White House this week instructed McGahn to defy the subpoena, noting Trump might exert executive privilege to block McGahn from cooperating, possibly setting him up for a contempt of Congress citation.