During a meeting with Trump’s legal team last month, special counsel Robert Mueller raised the possibility of a presidential subpoena of Trump if he declined an interview with the special counsel.
According to sources familiar with the encounter who spoke with The Washington Post, Mueller made the suggestion of subpoenaing Trump to appear before a grand jury after Trump’s lawyers insisted that the President wasn’t obligated to speak with Mueller’s team.
Trump’s former lawyer John Dowd — who ultimately resigned after his dispute with the rest of the legal team about whether Trump should sit for an interview with Mueller — was reportedly particularly irked by the special counsel’s warning.
“This isn’t some game,” Dowd said at the time, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke with the Post. “You are screwing with the work of the President of the United States.”
After the Mach 5 meeting, Mueller’s investigators reportedly provided Trump’s lawyers with more information about the scope of topics they wanted to explore with Trump. From that, Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow put together a list of 49 questions that the President may be asked— the document The New York Times obtained earlier this week, according to the Post’s sources. The scale of the questions that Mueller planned to raise with Trump has left the President fuming, according to the Post. Trump and his close advisers are reportedly using the list of inquiries to back up their claims that Mueller overstepped his bounds.
Trump’s legal team is reportedly considering whether to provide Mueller with a written response to his questions.
Read the Post’s full report here.
