Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
TRUMP-RUSSIA PROBE
Shift seen in interview talks.
WASHINGTON — In negotiations over a possible interview by prosecutors, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has offered the White House format changes, perhaps willing to limit some questions asked of President Donald Trump or accept some answers in writing, according to a person briefed on the proposal.
Talks between Trump’s lawyers and the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election have restarted in recent days, and it is not clear a deal will be struck, according to the person, who spoke Thursday on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations. Trump has publicly expressed a desire to be interviewed, but his lawyers have repeatedly objected to the investigators’ proposals.
Trump attorneys say both sides have exchanged proposals for conditions for such a Trump interview.
The negotiations come amid a backdrop of Trump’s escalating attacks on the probe, including his blunt declaration that his attorney general should terminate “right now” the federal probe into the campaign that took him to the White House, a newly fervent attack on the special counsel investigation that could imperil his presidency. Trump also assailed the trial, just underway, of his former campaign chairman by the special counsel’s team.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump’s tweet Wednesday was “not an order” and the president was not directing his attorney general to do anything.
“It’s the president’s opinion,” she said.
But Trump’s early morning tweets again raised the specter that he could try to more directly bring Mueller’s probe to a premature end. And it revived the idea that the president’s tweets themselves might be used as evidence that he is attempting to obstruct justice.
Trump has raged privately in recent days that both the forces of government and the media are trying to undermine him. That includes concocted charges against his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and distorting the outcome of the Helsinki summit to make it appear he was beholden to Russia, according to two Republicans close to the White House not authorized to speak about private conversations.
Trump was closely monitoring news coverage of the Manafort proceedings, which provoked the tweets, according to the two Republicans and two White House officials.
“The president’s not obstructing, he’s fighting back,” said Sanders, dismissing the idea Trump’s tweets could be tantamount to obstruction of justice.
Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, stressed that Trump was just issuing an opinion, though he also said the White House believes “the investigation should be brought to a close.”
“I guess, if we were playing poker — we’re not — put up or shut up, what do you got?” Giuliani said. “We have every reason to believe they don’t have anything.”
When pressed by reporters on how she tells the difference between a presidential order or an opinion, Sanders said Trump makes his intentions “pretty clear.”
But the line between registering an opinion or governing by tweet has bedeviled the White House from the start, even when former press secretary Sean Spicer declared tweets could be official White House statements. Earlier this year, Trump blindsided the Defense Department when he tweeted out a transgender ban for the military, prompting the Pentagon to slow-walk the program.
Mueller already is interested in some of Trump’s tweets to the extent they raise obstruction-of-justice concerns. Though experts believe obstruction by tweet is possible, prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular act got in the way of an investigation and that the person who did it intended to obstruct.