Donald Trump’s lawyers are hoping to cut short any potential interview the president will have with special counsel Robert Mueller for fear that Trump will not be able to sit down for several hours with investigators without lying, a new report claims.
Mueller’s investigation is reportedly moving closer to Trump and his inner circle, with the White House already receiving a list of potential questions for the president. But that could pose major problems for Donald Trump, with the Washington Post reporting that lawyers are afraid that Trump’s “penchant for making erroneous claims” will get him into serious trouble.
In an effort to limit the amount of time that Donald Trump would actually have to talk in an interview, his team sent what the report called written descriptions of key moments that Mueller is investigating. It is not clear if that will suffice for official accounts or an actual interview with Trump himself, and Mueller’s office did not respond to a request for comments on the article.
The report comes as Donald Trump launches his most direct attack on the Russia investigation and on Robert Mueller himself. Trump launched into a personal attack against Mueller on Twitter this weekend, the first time that Trump called out the Special Counsel by name.
As CNBC noted, the attacks led to alarm among some top Republicans, who spoke out against Trump’s targeting of Robert Mueller and warned publicly against any move to fire the special counsel. At a news conference on Tuesday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Mueller must be able to complete his investigation unimpeded, though other Republicans have shied away from creating actual legislation that would protect Mueller from being fired.
BREAKING NEWS (NYT): Two Sources Tell New York Times That Trump Ordered His Attorney John Dowd to Publicly Call for Mueller’s Firing https://t.co/4FdqfqExau
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 20, 2018
Donald Trump has continued to insist that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, and has called the investigation a “witch hunt.” However, Mueller’s investigation has continued to build steam and led to indictments against top Trump officials, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. It is not clear exactly when Mueller is targeting for an interview with Trump or if his office might subpoena the president to appear before investigators.
