The list of questions special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask President Donald Trump provides significant insight into the ongoing Russia probe. | Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call NYT: Mueller’s questions for Trump focus on Manafort, Flynn, Comey, Sessions

Special counsel Robert Mueller has a long list of questions for President Donald Trump, and is seeking to ask him about everything from Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser, to whether or not Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to resign, according to a New York Times report.

The Times reported on Monday night that Mueller had at least four dozen questions for Trump on a wide range of topics that have come to light during his Russia investigation. The list provides significant insight into what the special counsel is examining as his team continues to negotiate with the White House over a possible interview with the president.


Among those questions , according to The Times: What knowledge did Trump have of any outreach by his presidential campaign, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, to Russia about possible assistance to the campaign? What did Trump know about phone calls that Flynn made with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the time, in late December 2016? What was the president’s opinion of James Comey, the FBI director at the time, during the transition? Regarding the decision to fire Comey: When was it made, why, and who played a role? What did Trump think and do regarding the recusal of Sessions from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election?

Mueller’s questions are probing, open-ended and address some of the biggest flash points that have come up regarding the president and his conduct with relation to possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government in the election.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney from the Eastern District of Michigan, said one question stood out in the group published by the Times: Campaign outreach from Manafort to Russia about potential assistance with the campaign.

That question, she said, “seems to be based on previously nonpublic information.”

“Mueller is unlikely to include a false premise in a question, and so he must have heard from some source, such as Richard Gates, perhaps, that Manafort or others reached out to Russia,” she said. Gates was Manafort’s deputy during the campaign, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements, and is cooperating with Mueller’s team.

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Overall, McQuade said, the questions struck her as “very open-ended” and likely the starting point for a much deeper interview.

“Many of the questions seemed designed to assess Trump’s state of mind, which would be important to prove the corrupt intent necessary to establish obstruction of justice,” she said.

Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, said he saw “nothing surprising” in the topics Mueller wants to cover.

“The real questions will be the follow up questions that will rely on detailed facts provided by Mueller’s cooperating witnesses — Flynn, Gates and Papadopoulos — other witnesses who have not pled to any violations, and documents, including emails and data from the review of massive computer evidence,” he said. Papadopoulos was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is also cooperating in the special counsel’s investigation.

Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor, said Monday night’s leak of Mueller’s questions was “unheard of in FBI investigations.”

“If this is a witch hunt, it’s one for special-needs witches: Questions given in advance so the test will be easier to handle and so the questions can be shared with all the other witches,” Buell said.

Among those in the above list, Mueller is asking about exactly when Trump found out about calls that Flynn made to Kislyak. Flynn was later fired, according to Trump, for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about those contacts. As part of his guilty plea, Flynn pledged to cooperate fully with the investigations, including testifying in any future cases Muller’s team files.

Manafort is facing a litany of charges related to his lobbying work before he joined the Trump campaign. Among them are allegations that he worked with pro-Russian individuals on a lobbying campaign for Ukraine without complying with the law to register as a foreign agent.

In a court motion related to leaks filed Monday night just before the questions went public, Manafort’s defense team said that it had repeatedly requested from prosecutors proof of intercepted conversations between the longtime political consultant and Russian officials, but that none has been produced. The defense lawyers say that this strongly suggests some of the sources quoted in news stories were fabricating claims that the U.S. government had such information.

“The government-sourced leaks concerning surveillance of Mr. Manafort with foreign individuals is particularly troubling,” the defense wrote. “Despite multiple discovery … requests in this regard, the Special Counsel has not produced any materials to the defense — no tapes, notes, transcripts or other material evidencing surveillance or intercepts of communications between Mr. Manafort and Russian intelligence officials, Russian government officials (or any other foreign officials.) The Office of Special Counsel has advised there are no materials responsive to Mr. Manafort's requests.”

In other areas, the special counsel seems to be examining Trump’s relationship with Comey, whose firing was a major event that eventually led to Mueller’s appointment and questions continue to surround the exact reason for his ouster.

The Times’ publication of the Mueller questions comes a week after the president’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, met with the special counsel’s office for the first time in a bid to restart talks on the interview. Trump for months had signaled an interest in meeting with Mueller but had backed away from that strategy in the wake of the FBI’s raid in early April on the hotel room and office of Michael Cohen, his longtime personal attorney.

Trump’s personal attorneys and many of his outside advisers for months had been urging him to reject an interview from Mueller, or at the very least to insist first on only answering written questions. From the other direction, legal experts say Mueller would welcome a Trump interview but must make a calculation on whether he’d be willing to force a court fight by issuing a subpoena to the president if he resisted a voluntary interview.

The special counsel is likely to win a Supreme Court fight with Trump over this issue, but the battle could take months and give the president an upper hand politically.

“The most likely explanation is that they are trying to justify Trump’s decision not to be interviewed, by demonstrating how broad the questions are,” Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor, said of the questions’ release, which she said had the fingerprints of a source sympathetic to the president’s arguments.

“It’s a risky strategy, because these questions tell a powerful story about the case, even without answers by Trump,” she added. “Trump will never answer these questions, but that is not a problem for the Mueller investigation. They already know the answers.”

Pundits have long thought that Trump’s frequent tweets could get him into trouble. The list of questions would appear to back this up, given that Mueller’s team is asking about specific messages.

“What was the purpose of your May 12, 2017, tweet?” one question reads.

At the time, Trump tweeted: “James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard law professor whose legal arguments have been embraced by Trump and who recently met with the president and his aides at the White House, said Mueller’s questions appeared to have a broader goal in mind: “Seduce him into giving long rambling answers by asking open-ended softball questions,” Dershowitz said in an email.

Jay Sekulow, a personal attorney for the president, declined comment on Monday night, as did a spokesman for Mueller.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

