Mr. Whitaker, the acting attorney general, sat on the board of a patent firm that was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission over accusations it bilked thousands of customers.
President Trump did not rule out a pardon for his former campaign chairman, while prosecutors say he violated a plea agreement and could face additional charges.
President Trump said he had looked only “lightly” at constructing a building in Russia. “Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project,” he said.
President Trump’s encounter with President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires will be the biggest test yet of whether Mr. Trump’s cultivation of the Chinese leader can overcome their differences.
During the presidential campaign, Michael D. Cohen and Felix Sater, an associate with a criminal past, pursued a new Trump Tower project with a former spymaster’s help.
President Trump told the special counsel that he knew of a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and discussed it with his longtime fixer before it fell apart, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said.
“Why would I take it off the table?” the president said of a pardon for Paul Manafort, who he said had been treated poorly by prosecutors for the special counsel.
China’s practice of breaking into American computers has become a core grievance of the Trump administration as leaders of the two nations prepare to meet.
A vote to limit U.S. military support in Yemen showed widespread disapproval of President Trump’s embrace of Saudi Arabia after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.