Mueller likely will seek interview with Trump

WASHINGTON» Special counsel Robert Mueller has raised the likelihood with President Donald Trump’s legal team that his office will seek an interview with the president, triggering a discussion among his attorneys about how to avoid a sit-down encounter or set limits on such a session, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Mueller brought up 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 realizes,” the source said, who 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.

However, the president’s attorneys are reluctant to allow him to sit down for open-ended, 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 portion of the questions from Mueller’s investigators, as then-President Ronald Reagan did during the Irancontra investigation.

They have also discussed the obligation of Mueller’s team to demonstrate they could not obtain the information they are seeking without interviewing the President.

Dowd and Sekulow declined to comment.

Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing the administration’s response to the Mueller investigation, repeatedly had said all interviews of White House personnel by Mueller’s office were on schedule to be completed by the end of December or early this year. On Monday, he said he remains confident any portion of the investigation related to the president or the White House will wrap up shortly.

Mueller and Trump’s legal team plan to meet again soon to discuss the possible terms and substance of the interview, as well as Mueller’s timeline for the investigation, according to one person familiar with the plan.