Ex-Trump aide will co-operate with Mueller
Nunberg had said he planned to defy subpoena
• Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg said Tuesday he plans to comply with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s subpoena, an abrupt turnabout from just 24 hours earlier, when Nunberg publicly defied the Justice Department in an extraordinary daylong media blitz.
In a brief interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Nunberg said he plans to comply with Mueller’s subpoena — part of the special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — and had changed his mind after receiving public and unsolicited advice from Maya Wiley, a lawyer with whom he appeared on MSNBC show Monday.
“She’s very, very smart,” Nunberg said, referring to Wiley, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s former chief counsel. “She made a compelling case to me, and the case was that they have to do this for their investigation, and it was a fair point.”
Nunberg began his media whirlwind Monday with The Washington Post, declaring, “Let him arrest me,” as he explained why he did not plan to hand over emails and other documents related to President Donald Trump and nine current and former Trump advisers, which Mueller had requested.
But by the time Nunberg appeared on MSNBC Monday evening, his behaviour had grown increasingly erratic — captivating everyone from West Wing aides to members of the media, and alarming some of his friends, who called him and begged him to stop.
Nunberg appeared on the show with Wiley as another panellist. Wiley several times spoke directly to him, seeming to offer free legal advice. Addressing a concern of his, she said he was not protecting his self-described mentor, Roger Stone, by refusing to co-operate, and urged him to “go testify.”
When Nunberg said the subpoena was costing him 80 hours of time as he tried to sort through the documents and emails Mueller had requested, Wiley interjected, somewhat incredulously: “You’d rather spend possibly a year in jail than 80 hours going through documents?”
By Tuesday morning, Nunberg seemed to have come around to her viewpoint.
Nunberg, a top political staffer for Trump in the runup to the campaign, was fired in 2015 for racially insensitive Facebook posts and has since existed on the fringes of Trump’s orbit as a consultant.