US President Donald Trump wants to talk to special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the US special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election despite Mr Trump’s lawyers urging him against it, reports the New York Post.

A person close to the president told CNN that Mr Trump believes he is innocent ​of colluding with the Russians ​and ​feels confident ​of his vast experience testifying under oath in lawsuits during his time as a real estate developer.

“He thinks he can work this,” th​e person ​told the cable network​. “He doesn’t realise how high the stakes are.”

​But the person cautioned that once Mr Trump commits, there’s no turning back: “You can’t get up and walk away. It’s not that easy.”

Mr Trump’s lawyers fear the president, who’s known for making false statements and contradicting himself, could open himself up to a perjury charge, the
Mr ​Mueller’s investigators haven’t yet requested a formal interview, but Mr Trump’s lawyers reportedly are negotiating behind the scenes on the scope of the questions and how the president could respond. ​

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci seemed to signal Mr Trump’s intentions during an interview on CNN.

“He’s basically saying that, ‘I’m wide open as a book. I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, and I’m willing to say so under oath,’” he told anchor Jake Tapper.

“So again, I still think that that is on the table.”

It comes as former US Vice President Joe Biden also told CNN he would advise Mr Trump not to talk to Mr Mueller for fear of being caught misleading investigators, and labelled him a “joke”.

“The President has some difficulty with precision,” Mr Biden said in an interview on Tuesday. “One of the things that I would worry about, if I was his lawyer, is him saying something that was just simply not true without him even planning to be disingenuous.”

SENATE REACHES TWO-YEAR BIPARTISAN BUDGET DEAL

It came as the Senate’s top Republican said there’s upper-house agreement on a two-year, almost $US400 billion ($508 billion) budget deal that would provide Pentagon and domestic programs with huge spending increases.

Senate Majority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, joined on the Senate floor by top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York, announced the pact. It would contain almost $US300 billion ($381 billion) over current limits on defense and domestic accounts.

Sen. McConnell said the measure would rewrite existing defence limits that have “hamstrung our armed forces and jeopardised our national security.”

The measure, aides said, also contains almost $US90 billion ($114 billion) in overdue disaster aid and an increase in the government borrowing cap that would prevent a first-ever US government default on its obligations.