An end-date deal eyed for prez sitdown
President Trump’s lawyers hope to strike a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller in which the president will submit to an interview to hasten the conclusion of the investigation into Russian election meddling, a report said Friday.
Trump’s legal team may tell Mueller that Trump would agree to a sitdown if the special counsel commits to a date for wrapping up at least the part of the probe involving the president, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources.
One of the ideas, according to the Journal, would be to suggest a deadline of 60 days after the interview for Mueller to wrap up the sprawling investigation.
Team Trump also wants to limit the scope of the topics Mueller can cover, the paper said, focusing only on former national security adviser Mike Flynn, who has already pleaded guilty, and former FBI Director James Comey, whom the president fired amid the investigation into Russian meddling and possible collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia.
Flynn was pushed out of the White House after serving for less than a month. He pleaded guilty last December to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
Trump axed Comey after an acrimonious relationship. He initially claimed Comey was fired over his handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, but in an interview with NBC, Trump said it was over the “Russia thing.”
“When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,’ ” Trump said.
Legal experts were skeptical Mueller would agree to Team Trump’s demands for a sitdown.
“Someone could walk in the door on the day before their proposed deadline and say, ‘I’ve got some information that’s going to blow your minds’ [and] Mueller’s going to say, ‘Oh, too bad, the deadline’s tomorrow?’ ” Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor and an expert in government investigations, told the Journal.