What Mueller Wants to Ask Trump About Obstruction, and What It Means
The questions show the special counsel’s focus on obstruction of justice and touch on some surprising other areas.
mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/us/politics/questions-mueller-wants-to-ask-trump-russia.html
Renato Mariotti
@renato_mariotti
THREAD: What do Mueller’s questions for Trump, released today by the @nytimes, tell us about his investigation? (A lot.)
1/ Today @nytimes released a list of questions that Mueller provided to Trump’s lawyers as part of their negotiations for an interview with Trump. They’re very revealing and worth a read.
2/ As a starting point, it is very unusual for a prosecutor to provide detailed questions to an interviewee in advance. Typically prosecutors want to surprise an interviewee and get his off-the-cuff responses. Getting questions in advance allows him to carefully craft answers.
3/ So why did Mueller provide the questions to Trump? An obvious answer is that Trump can refuse the interview and plead the Fifth if subpoenaed. Most people under investigation would take the Fifth, but Mueller perhaps thought this could convince Trump to sit for an interview.
4/ It might work. Another obvious question—why did someone on Trump’s team decide to release these questions to the @nytimes? Perhaps they want to convince Trump not to sit for an interview, as John Dowd tried to do before quitting Trump’s legal team.
5/ Turning to the questions, it’s worth noting that despite being detailed, these are just the high-level questions that Mueller wants to ask Trump. Mueller would obviously ask follow up questions, and those questions could be even more important.
6/ The questions are very revealing—they’re a roadmap of Mueller’s view of Trump’s potential criminal liability. Mueller is investigating additional subjects, but it’s hard to believe that he sees liability for Trump beyond the topics in these questions.
7/ The reason I’m skeptical that Mueller has evidence of liability beyond these topics right now is that he has to know that Trump might not sit for a second interview. If he doesn’t get to a topic in this initial interview, he may never get to ask it.
8/ This also raises a key question—why interview Trump now? If Mueller is still investigating many matters, he could uncover additional evidence that could lead to new questions. Is he concerned that the likelihood that Trump will agree to an interview will decrease over time?
9/ One obvious takeaway from the questions is that most of them relate in one way or another to potential obstruction of justice. This reinforces my view that Mueller will likely conclude Trump obstructed justice, which I discussed in @POLITICOMag: www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2018/01/26/mueller-trump-obstruction-of-justice-russia-216532
10/ Many of the questions about obstruction are highly detailed, asking about specific tweets and statements by Trump. The questions on other topics are much more vague—typically “What do you know about” a topic?
11/ This suggests to me that Mueller’s team was more guarded about topics that haven’t already been covered in the press at length. They could use the documents, emails, and other evidence they collected as “follow up” questions to these very broad/vague questions.
12/ In contrast, the questions about obstruction are detailed and focus on pinning down Trump as to his intent. Firing Comey was only obstruction of justice if Trump acted with a “corrupt” intent—in other words, with the intent to unlawfully hinder the investigation.
13/ I’ve discussed at length how Trump’s tweets and conversations could be used to prove his corrupt intent (in the @POLITICOMag piece and elsewhere), and there’s no question Trump’s team has been focused on this issue. What his team doesn’t know is what else Mueller has.
14/ What has to scare Trump’s team are broad questions like “During the campaign, what did you know about Russian hacking, use of social media or other acts aimed at the campaign?” His lawyers have to piece together what documents Mueller has and what other witnesses will say.
15/ Of all the questions on the list, the only one that comes as a surprise is this one: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” There has been no reporting on this topic.
16/ Does that mean that Mueller has not uncovered any topics that haven’t been leaked to the media? Possibly, because Mueller finds information by interviewing witnesses that are free to speak to the media and subpoenaing documents from companies that could also talk.
17/ I think what’s most likely is that Mueller’s team was careful about showing their cards and made some of the questions/topics so broad that their best evidence will fit inside them. So the lack of detailed questions on non-obstruction topics may not mean much beyond that.
18/ I’ll have more thoughts tomorrow, including thoughts about specific questions, and I’ll read your comments and do my best to follow up. There’s too much here to cover in depth in one thread. /end