US Special Counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly seeking to question President Donald Trump in the coming weeks as part of his ongoing probe into the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 White House race.
News of Mueller’s latest plan, first reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, comes days after his questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the first Trump Cabinet member to be interviewed in the protracted investigation.
Trump’s legal team is reportedly negotiating the terms for the interview, possibly with some questions answered by the President in a face-to-face session with Mueller and others by way of a written response.
There has been no official confirmation so far either from the Special Counsel or the White House about the interview move or the terms.
Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russians in the run-up to the November 2016 election that he won, but the latest media reports suggest that Mueller may be probing whether he, as President, sought to obstruct the investigation itself.
Citing unnamed people familiar with Mueller’s plans, The Post reported that Trump was likely to be questioned about his decisions to oust his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn last February and FBI Director James Comey in May.
Flynn pleaded guilty in early December to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the former Russian Ambassador to the US and said that he was cooperating with the Special Counsel’s office. It has also emerged that Mueller has interviewed the dismissed FBI chief Comey late last year.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, fielding questions on whether the President will submit to an interview by Mueller, said: “We’re going to be fully cooperative with the Special Counsel and we’re going to continue to do that throughout the process. But we’re also not going to comment on who may or may not, or could be interviewed at any point.”
“We want to see this (probe) come to a complete and full conclusion,” Sander said, adding: “The President wants to see this end, and he wants to see them finally come to the same conclusion that I think most everyone in America has, that there is nothing to this.”
legal experts said it could not be determined at this point as to what may be guiding Mueller’s plan to question the President. “It’s possible that Mueller is closing in on his determination about what obstruction looks like, whether it is a criminal offense in his mind, whether it is an impeachable offense, or whether it amounts to nothing,” Michael Zeldin, a former senior aide to Mueller at the Justice Department, told CNN.
Former US Attorney Preet Bharara, who himself was fired by Trump last March, offered similar comments to the network, saying one doesn’t know if the eported Mueller effort will lead to anything at all.
“Sometimes you get to the end of an investigation and you have the final interview to check the box,” Bharara commented, adding: “It may be that this will lead to something very significant and earth-shattering and earth-shaking for the country, it also could be something they are just putting to bed.”