Counsel likely to seek interview with Trump

Cartoon on Trump and Michael Wolff's book about a dysfunctional White House. Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has told Donald Trump's legal team that his office is likely to seek an interview with the US President, triggering a discussion among his lawyers about how to avoid a sit-down encounter or set limits on such a session, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Mueller raised the issue of interviewing Trump during a late December meeting with the President's lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow. Mueller deputy James Quarles, who oversees the White House portion of the special counsel investigation, also attended.

The Special Counsel's team could interview Trump soon on some limited portion of questions - possibly within the next several weeks, according to a person close to the President.

"This is moving faster than anyone really realises," the person said. Trump is comfortable participating in an interview and believes it would put to rest questions about whether his campaign coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election, the person added.

However, the President's lawyers are reluctant to let him sit for open-ended, face-to-face questioning without clear parameters, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Since the December meeting, they have discussed whether the President could provide written answers to some of the questions from Mueller's investigators, as President Ronald Reagan did during the Iran-contra investigation. They have also discussed the obligation of Mueller's team to demonstrate that it could not obtain the information it seeks without interviewing the President.

President Donald Trump acknowledges applause after speaking at the American Farm Bureau Federation annual convention. Photo / AP

"It would certainly seem they would be close to wrapping up as it relates to the core matter they are investigating," said Solomon Wisenberg, a deputy independent counsel who questioned President Bill Clinton in 1998. "You would want to know as much as possible before you go to the President."

Meanwhile, the White House is struggling to contain the national discussion about Trump's mental acuity and fitness for the job, which has overshadowed the Administration's agenda for the past week.

Trump publicly waded into the debate spawned by a new book, Fire and Fury - Michael Wolff's inside account of the presidency - by claiming on Twitter that he is "like, really smart" and "a very stable genius". In doing so, the President both underscored his Administration's response strategy - by being forceful and combative - while also undermining it by gleefully entering a debate his aides have tried to avoid.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Photo / AP

Trump privately resents the now-regular chatter on cable television news shows about his mental health and views the issue as "an invented fact" and "a joke" much like the Russia probe, according to one person who recently discussed it with him.

So far, Trump's advisers have adopted a posture of umbrage and indignation. Rather than dignifying questions about whether their 71-year-old boss is fit to be president, they attack the inquisitors for having the gall to ask.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday slammed what she called "ridiculous reports from detractors" and described an "outpouring of support from a totally indignant staff".

Asked whether Trump's physical examination, scheduled for Saturday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre, would include a psychiatric component, deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley replied, "No".

Cartoon on Trump and Michael Wolff's book about a dysfunctional White House. Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Yesterday, as Trump delivered a speech on agriculture policy in Nashville, neither CNN nor MSNBC carried his full remarks live. Instead, anchors Jake Tapper and Nicolle Wallace, respectively, interviewed journalists and pundits about Wolff's book and Trump's reaction to it.

Some Trump allies voiced frustration that the White House does not appear to have implemented a full-scale crisis communications plan. "When you raise an issue like the mental acuity of the president, there is no organised effort to push back," said one ally. "How do you disprove a fallacy?"