BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. — President Trump denied Sunday that White House counsel Don McGahn had “turned’’ on him while briefing investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying McGahn is not “a John Dean type ‘rat.’ ’’

In a series of Twitter messages, Trump attacked The New York Times for its report describing the extensive cooperation between McGahn and investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller.

In the posts, the president confirmed that he had made the unusual decision to allow McGahn and other officials to cooperate fully with the inquiry. “I allowed him and all others to testify. I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide,’’ he wrote.

But Trump said the Times article had falsely insinuated that McGahn was working against him.

“The failing New York Times wrote a fake piece today implying that because White House counsel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the special counsel, he must be a John Dean type ‘rat,’ ’’ Trump said, referring to the Nixon White House counsel who cooperated with investigators in the Watergate investigation.

In a statement, The Times’s communications department said the paper stood by the report and the reporters who wrote it, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman. In one of his tweets, Trump called them “two fake reporters.’’

The article detailed how McGahn, fearing that he could be made a scapegoat by the president, has described Trump’s actions and anger toward the Russia inquiry in at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled about 30 hours.

McGahn gave the investigators information that they might not otherwise have gotten, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others.

The report said the president had wrongly believed that McGahn would act as his personal lawyer and solely defend his interests to investigators.

But McGahn has viewed his role as a protector of the presidency, not of Trump, and people close to the president now believe it was a mistake to have cooperated so fully.

McGahn, the article said, gave investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president, and he cautioned to investigators that he never saw Trump go beyond what he viewed as the president’s legal authorities.

Trump used his tweets Sunday morning, which he wrote from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., to intensify his assault on the special counsel investigation. He called the inquiry “McCarthyism at its worst’’ — a reference to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s persecution of suspected communist sympathizers in the 1950s.

Dean, a frequent critic of the president, was the White House counsel for President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He ultimately cooperated with prosecutors and helped bring down the Nixon presidency in 1974, though he served a prison term for obstruction of justice.

In a Twitter message late Saturday, Dean said, ‘‘Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate. Fate is never kind to bunglers and/or botchers!’’

In response to Trump’s tweets, Dean added Sunday that he doubts the president has ‘‘any idea’’ what McGahn has told Mueller. Also, Nixon knew I was meeting with prosecutors, because I told him. However, he didn’t think I would tell them the truth!’’

Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said Sundayon NBC’s ‘‘Meet the Press’’ that Trump didn’t raise executive privilege or attorney-client privilege during McGahn’s interviews because his team believed that fully participating would be the fastest way to bring the investigation to a close.

‘‘The president encouraged him to testify, is happy that he did, is quite secure that there is nothing in the testimony that will hurt the president,’’ Giuliani said.

Giuliani said having Trump sit down for an interview with Mueller’s team wouldn’t accomplish much because of the he-said-she-said nature of witnesses’ recollections.

‘‘It’s somebody’s version of the truth, not the truth,’’ he said. ‘‘Truth isn’t truth.’’

The “truth isn’t truth’’ comment echoed the phrase “alternative facts’’ coined by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway in 2017.