President Donald Trump on Wednesday danced around a question about what parameters he would set for a potential interview with special counsel Robert Mueller. He eventually said “it seems unlikely that you would even have an interview,” given the his assertion there hadn’t been any collusion between him or his associates and Russia.
During a joint press conference with Trump and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Fox News’ John Roberts asked the President about a potential interview between himself and Mueller, the approach to which, the Washington Post and NBC News reported Monday, is the subject of debate within the President’s legal team.
“Are you open to meeting with him? Would you be willing to meet with him without condition? Or would you demand that a strict set of parameters be placed around any encounter between you and the special counsel?” Roberts asked.
Trump repeated eight times in his response that no collusion had yet been found between him or his associates and Russia. (Congressional and federal investigators’ probes are ongoing.)
He also highlighted the conditions under which Hillary Clinton was interviewed in July 2016 by the FBI during the bureau’s investigation of her use of a private email server. Trump incorrectly asserted that the FBI agents interviewing Clinton didn’t take notes — they did — and asserted “a lot of people looked upon that as being a very serious breach and it really was.”
After he bobbed and weaved, the President gave his real answer: “We’ll see what happens. Certainly I’ll see what happens. But when they have no collusion and nobody has found any collusion, at any level, it seems unlikely that you would even have an interview.”
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