A leaked copy of the questions Robert Mueller wants to ask Donald Trump, published Monday by The New York Times, has renewed speculation about whether the president still intends to face off against the special counsel, or whether he will heed the counsel of advisers who have warned him against testifying in the Russia probe. Indeed, as members of the Washington, D.C. bar have told me, Trump’s penchant for half-truths, exaggerations, and outright falsehoods mean there is little upside to an interview. “I think there are tremendous risks in this case, because the easiest case for the government to prove would be a false statement given to the F.B.I. or the independent counsel,” said Robert Bennett, the Washington superlawyer who represented President Bill Clinton in the Starr investigation. “That’s a very easy one to prove.”

Trump, however, is reportedly eager to prove his innocence—a stance that ultimately prompted one of his attorneys in the Russia investigation, John Dowd, to resign at the end of March. The president’s naïveté may also account for the sudden appearance of Mueller’s questions in the press. “Perhaps [they] hope by leaking this they can convince Trump not to sit for an interview,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told me. “We have seen published reports that Trump pays attention to what is said on television more than he pays attention sometimes to his own advisers.” The president, he added, is “facing some significant liability.”

Mueller’s questions—49 in all—make clear why any lawyer would be worried. “The focus is overwhelmingly on possible obstruction of justice,” said William Jeffress, who represented Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame leak case, noting that they mostly focused on the Russia investigation itself, rather than Trump’s campaign. The questions include Trump’s controversial decision to fire former F.B.I. director James Comey; the president’s conversations with Comey about his former national security adviser Michael Flynn; and his reported efforts to oust Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his decision to recuse himself from the probe last spring. (Neither Mueller’s office nor Trump’s legal team responded to the Times request for comment.)

This focus is not unexpected. For months it has been reported that Mueller wants to interview Trump to close out the obstruction component of his probe, which requires an understanding of the president’s mindset. Proving corrupt intent, of course, is famously difficult to do. Firing the director of the F.B.I., for instance, is clearly within the president’s authority. And, as one Washington defense lawyer reminded me, there is a robust legal debate over whether a sitting president can be indicted at all. “The questions might be meaningful in a typical obstruction case but here they are made irrelevant for one big reason,” this person said. “Can the president be charged with a crime for exercising powers the Constitution confers on him explicitly?”

Trump erupted Tuesday morning, after the Times report, insisting that he received “no questions on Collusion” and also that collusion is a “made up, phony crime.” A closer examination of the questions does suggest, however, that Mueller remains interested in collusion. A number of the inquiries focus on what the president knew about communications between his campaign and Russians during the 2016 election period, as well as on Trump’s Russian business ties, including his involvement in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and the failed effort to build a Trump Tower Moscow. The one question that falls outside the scope of what has been reported publicly also appears to center on collusion: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” (No such overtures by Trump’s former campaign chairman have yet been reported.)