Last night, the New York Times published a list of nearly 50 questions that special counsel Robert Mueller apparently has prepared for Donald Trump. Times reporter Michael Schmidt says these questions were given verbally to John Dowd, before Dowd quit. The belief is that Dowd quit specifically because Trump wanted to sit down and answer these questions, and Dowd was unwilling to be the lawyer dumb enough to let that happen.

That this leak comes from the Trump legal team and not Mueller should be obvious, but I’ll show my work so everybody can keep up in class.

Mueller verbally communicated the questions to Dowd, which is what you do to make sure something like this doesn’t leak out of your office.

These aren’t “questions” in the investigative sense. Questions come in binders. These are “topics.”

To highlight the difference between topics and questions, let’s take a well known example: the Lester Holt interview where Trump admitted that he fired James Comey because of the “Russia thing.” In the published document, the question is “What did you mean in your interview with Lester Holt about Mr. Comey and Russia?” But that’s not how this topic will come at Trump in a deposition. Instead, it’ll be a series of questions like: “Who approached you for the Holt interview?” “Did you set it up yourself?”

“Did you know what he was going to ask in advance?”

“Did you do any prep for that interview? Are there documents reflecting that prep? Can we see them?”

“Had you spoken with Holt before? His producers?”

“How much of the interview made it on air?” “What did you talk about that was cut?”

“When you said ‘the Russia thing’ what were you referring to? A specific report? A news item?”

“How did Comey’s handling of the ‘Russia Thing’ displease you?”

“Was Holt the only person you told about your thinking? Who else? Was Holt the only reporter you told about your thinking? Who else?”

And that’s if they even ASK about Holt! Given time constraints, it might not be worth it to get additional answers to something that Trump has already talked about on the record. Again, deposition questions are way more specific than what was published in the Times.

Instead, this looks like defense deposition prep. And, shockingly, prep at the very early stages. You want to work out your client’s on the record take on these topics. Work out the best possible answers, and drill them into his or her head. This looks every bit like defense counsel attorney work product.

And, a former Mueller assistant points out that there are grammatical errors in the document that aren’t reflective of how Mueller’s office operates. Meanwhile, everybody in Trump’s orbit is as sloppy as I am in their written work.

And if that doesn’t convince you that this document was prepared by the defense side of the table, then I’ll just also point out that Mueller’s office hasn’t leaked nearly at all during this process, while Trump’s White House leaks like a canoe that’s been strafed by an A-10 Warthog. Trump’s legal team leaked this out. And I’ve got five bucks saying it’s Giuliani time that did it.

The more interesting question is “why?”

My theory is that if this is deposition prep that Trump’s lawyers leaked it to the press to make Trump FOCUS. As we know, Trump doesn’t read and he doesn’t study. He gets nearly all of his information from television. Leaking these questions is both a way to warn Trump that he is not at all ready to sit down and talk to Mueller (something he allegedly still wants to do) and has the benefit of at least getting Trump to see these questions that he’s probably never looked at even though Dowd’s document has probably been floating around the White House for months. The lawyers are trying to manage their client through the media, and that’s why these questions are out.

Joe Patrice’s theory is that Trump’s lawyers are trying to lay the groundwork for an argument that Mueller has “exceeded his mandate.” Right now, Ken Starr is ironically the one carrying a lot of water on this front. It seems clear that some Republicans want to fire Rosenstein and Mueller, and by putting these questions out there, the hope could be that people react to them as “excessive.”

Of course, both Joe and I are giving Trump’s legal team a lot of credit. Credit they haven’t really earned. It could be that the Trump lawyers are bad enough to think that leaked questions could somehow obstruct Mueller’s ability to move forward. It shouldn’t in any way, but a Trump lawyer can dream, I suppose.

What’s your theory? Are they trying to educate their client, obstruct the investigation, or something else entirely? Trying to figure out why anybody in TrumpWorld does any of the dumb-ass things they do is always a fun parlor game.

Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction [New York Times]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.