Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg returned to cable television Sunday, following a Friday appearance before special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s grand jury, with a simple message for the President: Cooperate.
“The President is going to have to explain, and the President has to do an interview, I would say,” he told MNSBC’s Alex Witt in an interview Sunday, before referring to the President’s decision to fire then-FBI Director James Comey. “I would highly suggest that he does.”
The Sunday interview represented a 180-degree turn for Nunberg. In November of last year, he advised Trump not to cooperate with Mueller. And last week he made a show, in several televised interviews, of promising to defy the special counsel’s subpoena for his communications with several campaign officials, including Roger Stone, who Nunberg has called his mentor.
Nunberg did end up committing to hand over the requested emails and appearing before Mueller’s grand jury. He’s since bragged about the coverage his defiant interview blitz achieved.
On Sunday, he advocated for the President’s cooperation with Mueller, saying that “taxpayers are getting their money’s worth,” with the special counsel’s office and describing the grand jury as serious, attentive, and “people that represented all parts of America.” Robert Mueller himself, Nunberg said, wasn’t in attendance at his appearance.
“To me it felt like he was a Talmud teacher and I was back in Yeshiva,” Nunberg told Witt, describing the lawyer interviewing him before the grand jury.
“It was ‘boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’ There was nothing subjective,” he continued.
Asked if Mueller’s team was looking into Russian involvement in the Trump campaign, Nunberg said he didn’t think he was “leaking anything that the special counsel would be upset with” by saying that “of course they’re looking into whether there was coordination with the emails, of course they are, and the hacking.”
Nunberg said he thought both Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-candidate Donald Trump were “too smart” to attempt to work directly with each other.
“There are a lot of weird connections,” though, he noted at one point.
“This is legitimate to have this special counsel,” Nunberg said. “That’s why I also think the President should meet with him and get this over with.”
