"Trump walked into the meeting unannounced and began talking. The president later told reporters to quote him on the record. Trump's remarks took White House officials by surprise and came as his lawyers were negotiating with Mueller's team on a potential interview. The president's lawyers have repeatedly encouraged him not to post tweets or make comments about the investigation without their knowledge, saying such comments could damage him."
The president's proclamation reflects his preternatural self-confidence that he can talk his way out of any pickle. He insists he's done nothing wrong, and he recognises the bad optics of refusing to cooperate. Perhaps he thinks he can publicly convey support for transparency, even as he privately drags his feet, puts up roadblocks and makes demands that Mueller won't agree to.
A conventional politician would be boxed in by this kind of proclamation, but Trump has long demonstrated a Houdini-like willingness to wiggle out of commitments. We've still never seen those tax returns, for example, which he promised he'd put out during the campaign and then backtracked on after the election.
But this Russia investigation is different than previous quagmires Trump has found himself bogged down by. If he drags his feet now, more Americans could conclude that he's worried and/or trying to hide something.
The president's lawyers quickly sought to clarify his statements. From the front page of Thursday's New York Times: "Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer leading the response to the investigation, said Mr Trump was speaking hurriedly and intended only to say that he was willing to meet. 'He's ready to meet with them, but he'll be guided by the advice of his personal counsel,' Mr Cobb said. He said the arrangements were being worked out between Mr Mueller's team and the president's personal lawyers."
Cobb expressed concern last week that Trump might be walking into a "perjury trap" by talking to Mueller: "I would hope that a fair-minded Office of Special Counsel would approach it in a dutiful way consistent with precedent and it wouldn't just be a perjury trap," the White House lawyer told CBS News.
Mueller's team wants to question Trump about his decisions to fire Michael Flynn as national security adviser and James Comey as FBI director. In recent weeks, investigators have also questioned witnesses about his attempt to push out Jeff Sessions after the attorney general recused himself from the Russia investigation.
"People who have appeared before Mueller's team say prosecutors have detailed accounts of events, sometimes to the minute, and have surprised witnesses by showing them emails or documents they were unaware that the team had or that their colleagues had written," per Josh, David and Devlin.
"One person said Mueller's team has asked about Trump's private comments around key events and how he explained decisions. 'They are looking for a pattern,' said this person, who has spoken with Mueller's team and requested anonymity to speak about a federal investigation."
The president mounted a preemptive defence against potential obstruction charges, asserting that "fighting back" does not constitute obstructing justice. "Oh, well, 'Did he fight back?'" Trump said. "You fight back, 'Oh, it's obstruction.'"
Trump said he does not recall asking acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, whom he voted for in an Oval Office meeting last year. Then he argued it would not be a big deal if he did. "I don't think I did," he said. "I don't know what's the big deal with that. I would ask you who you voted for ... I don't remember asking him that question ... I think it's also a very unimportant question."
"As the President's attorneys try to whittle down Mueller's areas of interest, a source familiar with the matter says the special counsel has obliged by offering a list of topics," CNN reported Wednesday night. In addition to the firings of Comey and Flynn, Mueller also reportedly wants to know about Trump's reaction to Comey's testimony last May, shortly before he was fired, and his outreach to intelligence leaders about the Russia investigation.
"The lawyer-to-lawyer discussions about Trump's possible testimony are informal and Mueller is not obligated to accept the terms presented by the President's team," CNN notes. "If negotiations break down, Mueller could seek a subpoena to compel wide-ranging testimony from the President before a grand jury."
"Mueller is moving at a far faster pace than previously known and appears to be wrapping up at least one key part of his investigation - whether [Trump] obstructed justice, according to current and former U.S. officials," Bloomberg reported Thursday morning.
"Even if Mueller wraps up the obstruction probe, other elements of his investigation - such as whether Trump or anyone close to him helped Russia interfere in the 2016 presidential election or broke any other laws - are likely to continue for months more, said two officials who asked to remain anonymous speaking about the probe."
Many supporters of the president have appeared on Fox News to make the case that he should not talk to Mueller. Sometimes it seems like they're trying to reach an audience of one by appearing on the channel they know he watches. The words "perjury trap" have been coming up a lot on the air.
Former Trump adviser and longtime confidant Roger Stone said Wednesday night that going through with plans to talk to Mueller would be a "suicide mission". On Laura Ingraham's primetime show, Stone said that a "first year law student" would advise the president that Mueller is setting "an obvious perjury trap".
"He is taking advantage of the president's loquaciousness," Stone said of Mueller. (He was once business partners with Paul Manafort, who has been indicted by Mueller.) He went on to criticise John Yoo, a former Justice Department official, for saying that Trump should meet with Mueller. He dismissed him as a "neocon" and "Bush-ite."
Andrew Napolitano, a former judge and Fox News legal analyst, also said emphatically that Trump should never agree to any interview. He explained that it's a bad idea because the president can never know what Mueller's team knows and what evidence they already have ahead of time.
"Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade made the same point during his show Wednesday: "It seems to me not in the president's interest to ... sit down and try to recall every single interaction, if somebody is there trying to maybe catch you in a perjury trap."
Commentators who aren't sympathetic to Trump are making similar points:
"I think that the unscripted appearance of the president talking about this has to make his lawyers a bit nuts because it's very hard to walk this back," Michael Zeldin, who once worked for Mueller at the Justice Department, told Anderson Cooper on CNN Wednesday night.
"Mueller should say to Ty Cobb and John Dowd, 'Good, your client is all ready to go, we are all ready to go, let's do it in the Map Room on Tuesday with a court reporter and we will settle this thing.'"
"No lawyer worth his or her salt would let a client like Trump go in for an interview," Cristian Farias writes in New York Magazine.
"A person with knowledge of the Mueller investigation who asked to remain anonymous told me that Trump is the kind of client who would 'humiliate you and destroy you because he just can't follow directions. 'The man's uncontrollable. He's a loose cannon,' the person with knowledge of the Mueller investigation said. 'No matter how much you prep him, no matter what small words you use to explain to him the potential landmines he could step on ... he will leap in blindly and say whatever pops into his head, and that could be a potential disaster ... The absolute last thing I want to do in my life is be sitting next to Donald Trump being questioned by the special counsel.'"
"Trump, in a 2012 deposition for a lawsuit against Trump University, testified that he'd been a witness 'over 100' times," Vanity Fair's Chris Smith notes.
"Often he seems nonchalant: In a 2016 dispute over celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian's deal to open a restaurant inside Washington's Old Post Office, Trump claimed he'd done 'virtually nothing' in preparation for questioning. Sometimes he is both conversant in fine details and craftily evasive. Trump sued journalist Tim O'Brien, claiming the journalist had understated Trump's net worth. O'Brien's attorneys, in a 2007 deposition, caught Trump in a series of falsehoods and exaggerations. A judge dismissed the lawsuit. There is also, infamously, the 2011 deposition during which Trump erupted in anger when attorney Elizabeth Beck, who had recently given birth, said she would use part of the lunch break to pump breast milk."
Three more updates related to the investigation:
1. A seemingly accidental filing by Paul Manafort's attorneys indicates that an informant inside the former Trump campaign chairman's consulting firm provided information to federal investigators. Politico's Josh Gerstein reports: "The document, titled 'DOJ, OSC and the Press,' says that a reporter appeared to have obtained access to internal documents from the firm Manafort founded, Davis Manafort Partners International. The memo indicates that an affidavit for a seizure warrant obtained by prosecutors on the same day Manafort was indicted in October says that a Davis Manafort staffer acknowledged allowing a journalist to look at the firm's digital records. 'In the Winter of 2017 (sic 2016) employee of DMI-CS-1 permitted the reporter to view material on a hard drive copy of DMI's electronic files,' the document reads, using a standard FBI acronym for a confidential source. 'Government obtained warrant for the hard drive.'"
2. Former federal prosecutor William Burck is representing three high-profile clients in the Russia probes - Steve Bannon, Don McGahn and Reince Priebus - which could lead to legal conflicts. Politico's Darren Samuelsohn reports: "At a minimum the dynamic could be awkward. At worst, it could create tensions that would leave Burck's clients looking for new legal representation. In an interview ... Burck - who is rarely quoted by reporters - acknowledged the potential for ethical conundrums and said he will keep reassessing the situation as the special counsel's investigation develops. 'It's a general pool type of relationship where, if a conflict arises, where everyone in good faith will try to figure out what the best way to proceed is,' Burck said. Mueller himself has signed off on Burck's triplet of Trump insiders[.]"
3. Two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling on their chairman, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to share transcripts of witness interviews with Mueller. In a letter, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, R.I., and Richard Blumenthal, Conn., wrote that these documents are "highly relevant" to the special counsel's probe, especially their closed-door sit-down with Donald Trump Jr., to discuss his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer.
