Trump responds to Mueller team inquiry

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has provided the special counsel’s office with written answers to questions about his knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 election, his lawyers said Tuesday, marking the first time Trump has directly cooperated with the investigation.

The step is a milestone in a monthslong negotiation between Trump’s attorneys and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team over whether and when the president would sit for an interview. They represent the first time the president is known to have described to investigators his knowledge of key moments under scrutiny by prosecutors. If Mueller finds the answers satisfactory, the responses may also help stave off a potential subpoena fight over Trump’s testimony.

The compromise outcome, nearly a year in the making, offers some benefit to both sides. Trump avoids, at least for now, a potentially risky and unpredictable sit-down with prosecutors, while Mueller secures a set of onthe-record statements whose accuracy the president and his lawyers will be expected to stand by for the duration of the investigation.

“The president today answered written questions submitted by the special counsel’s office,” attorney Jay Sekulow said in a statement. “The questions presented dealt with issues regarding the Russia-related topics of the inquiry. The president responded in writing.”

Sekulow said in a follow-up message that the legal team would not release copies of the questions and answers or discuss correspondence with the special counsel’s office.

Mueller’s team may well press for additional information.

Investigators months ago presented Trump’s legal team with dozens of questions they wanted to ask the president related to whether his campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to tip the 2016 election and whether he sought to criminally obstruct the Russia probe by actions including the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Mueller’s office agreed to accept written responses to questions about potential Russian collusion and tabled, for the moment, obstruction-related inquiries. They left open the possibility that they would follow up with additional questions on obstruction, though Trump’s lawyers — who had long resisted any face-to-face interview — had been especially adamant that the Constitution shielded him from having to answer any questions about actions he took as president.

Another of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, said Tuesday that the lawyers continue to believe that “much of what has been asked raised serious constitutional issues and was beyond the scope of a legitimate inquiry.” He said Mueller’s office had received “unprecedented cooperation from the White House.”

“It is time to bring this inquiry to a conclusion,” Giuliani said.

The precise questions and answers that Trump gave to Mueller weren’t immediately clear, though the president told reporters last week that he had prepared the responses himself.

Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday that he was unlikely to answer questions about obstruction, saying, “I think we’ve wasted enough time on this witch hunt and the answer is probably, we’re finished.”

Trump joins a list of recent presidents to be questioned as part of a criminal investigation.

In 2004, George W. Bush was interviewed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s office during an investigation into the leaked identity of a CIA officer. In 1998, President Bill Clinton testified before a federal grand jury in independent counsel Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation.