Anticipating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ask to interview President Donald Trump, the president’s legal team is discussing a range of potential options for the format, including written responses to questions in lieu of a formal sit-down, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Lawyers for Trump have been discussing with FBI investigators a possible interview by the special counsel with the president as part of the inquiry into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.
The discussions were described by one person with direct knowledge as preliminary and ongoing. Trump’s legal team is seeking clarification on whether the president would be interviewed directly by Mueller, as well as the legal standard for when a president can be interviewed, the location of a possible interview, the topics and the duration. But the president’s team is also seeking potential compromises that could avoid an interview altogether, two of those interviewed told NBC News.
With the possibility now looming that the president himself could be subject to an interview by the FBI or Mueller’s investigators, Trump’s legal team has been debating whether it would be possible to simply avoid it. One individual familiar with the strategy said those internal discussions within Trump’s legal team began shortly after the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was indicted in late October for money laundering in connection with his business dealings with Ukraine.
Yeah, you bet your ass Trump's attorneys want to avoid having him sit down for a direct interview with Mueller, or one of his prosecutors.
There is video of Trump giving a deposition online, and he does not do well under that kind of scrutiny, and he is all but guaranteed to perjure himself.
However there is almost no chance that Mueller will let Trump avoid this.
Justice Department veterans cast doubt on the possibility that Mueller, who served as FBI director for 12 years, would forgo the chance to interview the president directly.
“Prosecutors want to see and hear folks in person,” said Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and chief of staff to FBI Director Comey. “They want to probe and follow up. Body language and tone are important,” said Rosenberg, now an NBC News analyst. “And they want answers directly from witnesses, not from their lawyers. The odds of prosecutors agreeing to written responses are somewhere between infinitesimally small and zero."
My feeling is that once Mueller gets Trump into a room to answer direct questions, that it is game over for Trump.
And I think Trump's legal counsel is all too aware of that fact.
Source http://ift.tt/2CWghT2
