Counsel likely to seek
President’s lawyers have discussed providing written answers How Winfrey gave a master class
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 sitdown 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 openended, 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.
“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 With her spine-tingling Golden Globes speech, Oprah Winfrey paddled against the tide of self-pity, sectarianism, resentment and meanness that characterises politics in the age of Donald Trump.
Her message was that we are all in this together. She said the story of workplace abuse is universal. She ended with the sort of self-affirming optimism that has made her a star. Democrats and Republicans seeking to defeat Trump would be smart to identify the qualities that Winfrey demonstrates:
She is hopeful and optimistic, appealing to our better angels and not our base fears. She does not hold up boogeymen or dabble in conspiracy theories. She does not characterise the US as a dystopia nor exaggerate a set of challenges.
She is well-versed in history but does not pine for an imaginary past. She encourages her audience to continue towards a better union.
She understands that we come from diverse places but looks for the common thread of humanity.
It is not all about her. She does not set herself up as the saviour (“I alone”), nor peddle the false notion that there are easy fixes.
She conveys empathy — the most important quality for a political leader aside from intellectual curiosity. The ability to see the world from the vantage point of others is the critical first step. Only then can you problem-solve, summon resolve and inspire others to take a journey with you.
She defends objective truth and democratic institutions.
We should think of Winfrey’s speech as a master class in creating an alternative political culture. If Trump or Trumpism is still around in 2020, anti-Trump candidates will need to make the case against him and his outlook. His opponents will, by example, need to remind us that we can have a president who is articulate, educated, kind, grounded in reality and respectful of our democratic institutions. They will have to model the behaviour and values they want others to exhibit — and provide rhetoric that is as inspiring as Trump’s is depressing.