FBI special counsel Robert Mueller in March floated the idea of subpoenaing President Donald Trump to appear before a grand jury if the president would not talk with his team, The Washington Post reports.

Mueller suggested the idea after Trump's lawyers argued the president was not obligated to speak with federal investigators regarding the special counsel's probe into Russian election interference.

"This isn't some game," Trump's then-lawyer John Dowd reportedly replied. "You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States."

Dowd, who was Trump's lead lawyer on the team dealing with Mueller's investigation, quit in late March because of his inability to get the president to follow his advice regarding his public statements regarding the Russia probe, according to The New York Times.

Since the contentious March 5 meeting between Mueller and Trump's lawyers, Mueller's team agreed to provide Trump's lawyers with more specific information regarding the subjects prosecutors wished to discuss with Trump, and Trump's team then created a list of questions they believed Mueller's team would ask during the interview.

Those, reported Monday by The New York Times, primarily deal with the president's firings of former FBI Director James Comey and his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump in early January said he was "looking forward" to an interview with Mueller, and his legal team started preparing him for the possibility of one in early April. He has since backed off following the announcement his personal lawyer Michael Cohen was being investigated for potential bank fraud and campaign-finance violations.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to The Post and Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow and Dowd both also declined to comment.