Mueller Report Mystery: Why Did Donald Trump Jr. Refuse To Be Interviewed By Mueller? His Reasons Are Redacted

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday to post his latest series of attacks on Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller, four days after the public release of Mueller’s report on his investigation’s conclusions. In one post, Trump retweeted a message from about one year ago, smearing Mueller as “disreputable” with a “twisted history.”

But in another Twitter message posted Monday afternoon, Trump appears to say that Mueller deliberately avoided interviewing Trump’s close friends and family members because those individuals would tell the Special Counsel only “very good things.”

“Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller,” Trump wrote. “The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!”

But as Politico reporter Kyle Cheney noted on his Twitter account, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was indeed called in for an interview by Mueller, but he simply refused to do it.

As The Inquisitr reported, several legal experts have said that Mueller erred in failing to indict Trump Jr., who could have been charged with campaign finance crimes over his June 9, 2016, meeting with a group of Kremlin-linked Russians in Trump Tower — Russians who promised information that would supposedly “incriminate” Hilary Clinton.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was also a top campaign official and later senior White House adviser to Trump, attended the Trump Tower meeting as well, and was interviewed by Mueller, according to the Mueller report, which is available online courtesy of The New York Times.

In fact, Mueller’s report said that his investigative team interviewed all of the participants in the meeting other than Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who led the delegation, and who later admitted to being an “informant” for a top Kremlin official, as The Inquisitr has reported.

The Mueller report, Volume One, Page 117, said that Trump Jr. “declined to be voluntarily interviewed by the Office.” But why would Trump Jr. refuse to let Mueller ask him questions? The reasons appear to be contained in the following three lines of the report — which are blacked out because, the report explains, they reportedly contain information from grand jury proceedings, which remain confidential.

“The disposition of the matter, including any constitutional rights (Trump Jr.) may have asserted, is redacted in the report,” wrote Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes on his Twitter account. By “constitutional rights,” Wittes appears to be referring to Trump Jr.’s Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. But the report also does not say, at least not in the non-redacted sections of the text, whether or not Mueller attempted to subpoena Trump Jr., compelling him to testify.

The report, Volume One, Page 10, also states, “Some individuals invoked their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination and were not, in the Office’s judgment, appropriate candidates for grants of immunity,” raising the possibility that Trump Jr. requested immunity from prosecution, but Mueller refused.

Trump Jr. likely could not claim the right not to testify against his own father, because courts have repeatedly ruled that no child-parent “privilege” exists, according to FindLaw.