Donald Trump’s lawyers are open to having the president sit down for an interview with Robert Mueller, according to a senior White House official, as part of a wider posture of cooperation with the special counsel’s Russia probe.

If Mueller doesn’t request an interview by Thanksgiving, Trump’s lawyers might even force the issue by volunteering Trump’s time, the official said. The White House believes such an interview could help Mueller wrap up the probe faster and dispel the cloud of suspicion over Trump.


A meeting with Mueller could bring serious risks for Trump — exposing him to questions about everything from potential obstruction of justice over his firing of FBI Director James Comey to what Trump might know about Kremlin support for his presidential campaign.

But the official suggested that the White House has no reason to stonewall Mueller.

“Whatever happens with regard to whether or not, or how, the special counsel might want to interview the president, there’s no reason to expect that would be combative,” the senior White House official explained.

All the key decisions on Trump’s potential interaction with Mueller will come from the president himself and his personal lawyer, John Dowd, who initially declined to comment for this story. In an email after this article published, Dowd said: “Totally false!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Dowd disputed the senior official’s characterization of the Trump legal team’s position on an interview with Mueller.

Trump told reporters this spring that he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about alleged Russian ties to his campaign.

But even if he has nothing to hide, Trump’s unpredictable nature and willingness to bend the facts pose headaches for his legal team as it strategizes for a possible sit-down with Mueller. One angry or untrue statement could have devastating political and legal consequences for the president.

Trump would be the first president since Bill Clinton to face questions under oath from a federal prosecutor. In August 1998, Clinton famously sat for four hours of testimony as part of independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

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Republicans made Clinton’s arguments during the sworn testimony — over the definition of “sexual relations” and the meaning of the word “is” — central to his impeachment by the GOP-led House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Congressional Republicans later publicly released complete video of the testimony.

There’s little dispute over Mueller’s power to interview Trump in connection with his probe into Russian interference into the 2016 election. Every president since Watergate except Barack Obama has been directly involved in a federal criminal investigation while serving in office. All but George H.W. Bush agreed to submit to questioning.

“You can say, ‘I’m busy. I’m fighting World War III. I can’t talk to you right now.’ But you can’t just say because I’m president of the United States you have to wait until I’m out of office,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a deputy to Starr who participated in the grand jury questioning of Clinton in 1998. “If they want his testimony, he’s going to have to testify.”

Wisenberg said that, should Trump resist meeting with Mueller, he would trigger a constitutional clash that the prosecutor would be likely to win, based on Supreme Court rulings. Short of that, the only way Trump could avoid answering questions would be to assert executive or attorney-client privilege, or to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against possible self-incrimination.

Trump allies initially took a combative posture toward Mueller, but his lawyers have recently adopted a more cooperative stance toward the special counsel’s investigation, one they hope will expedite its conclusion while publicly signaling that Trump has nothing to hide.

Mueller’s office, which declined comment for this story, started interviewing Trump White House aides last month, according to a source familiar with the probe. Two of his most senior lawyers, criminal fraud experts Andrew Weissmann and Greg Andres, were spotted by POLITICO last Friday afternoon leaving the grand jury room at the federal courthouse.

Veterans of past investigations into alleged executive branch misconduct said a Trump interview would probably be among Mueller’s final steps before completing his work, either with indictments, a final report to the Justice Department or even the exoneration Trump often predicts.

Wisenberg said he’s not yet convinced that Mueller will even press for a presidential interview. But if the special counsel does, he predicted it would be near the end of the investigation. “You certainly don’t want to have to ask him twice,” Wisenberg said. “You want this investigation as wrapped up as it can be.”

Robert Bennett, who helped lead Clinton’s high-powered outside legal team during the Lewinsky scandal, said he thinks Mueller has “done a tremendous amount of work already and probably could do the interview sooner rather than later” with Trump.

“Mueller,” he added, “would want to get this guy on the record as quick as possible.”

By contrast, Bennett said, Trump’s lawyers may be smart to stall until they develop a clear understanding of what Mueller might want to talk about. “The wise thing to do is delay it as long as humanly possible to see what other things fall out,” he said.

Clinton’s attorneys resisted Starr’s attempts to get the president to testify about his relationship with Lewinsky — forcing the independent counsel to obtain the first-ever subpoena for federal grand jury testimony from a sitting president.

The president’s attorneys ultimately negotiated with Starr to conduct the interview in the White House Map Room. Unlike a typical grand jury interaction, Clinton was able to have his attorneys present in the room while Starr’s team posed questions. The grand jury, watching via video, also asked questions.

In the Iran-Contra investigation, President Ronald Reagan answered questions under oath on three different occasions, including twice when he was out of office. Reagan wasn’t officially notified until August 1992 that he wasn’t a target of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh’s probe. Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, gave a videotaped deposition for the Iran-Contra grand jury in early 1988, but White House attorneys fought off Walsh’s attempts to question him again after he became president.

A meeting with Trump could also bring perils for Mueller himself, legal experts said. Pressing Trump for answers on potential topics ranging from his business finances to his family’s role in the election could risk enraging a president who has privately mused about his power to fire the special counsel.

Katy Harriger, a Wake Forest University constitutional law professor who has written a book about the role of special prosecutors, said Mueller should interview Trump “only if it is absolutely necessary to the case.”

“It would be an understatement to say this president is unpredictable, and if you can make a case without his testimony I believe you would do that,” she said.

Mueller or defense attorneys may also seek Trump’s testimony in connection with potential criminal cases against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn or other members of the president’s inner circle. If so, Trump would not be the first president to field questions involving a federal criminal investigation focused on a case involving his associates.

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, for example, interviewed President George W. Bush during a 70-minute session in the Oval Office in June 2004, though not under oath, as part of his probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Fitzgerald also met with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Clinton gave four hours of videotaped testimony for the defense in the 1996 trial of then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker and James and Susan McDougal, which produced the first convictions in the independent counsel’s Whitewater probe. He also testified under oath in September 1999 during an independent counsel investigation into allegations that Labor Secretary Alexis Herman illegally solicited campaign contributions.

Trump’s lawyers could push to limit the time and scope of any interview with Mueller, and also ask for advance details about what kinds of topics and documents would be raised. Trump also could seek exemptions from questions by citing executive and attorney-client privilege.

As a last resort, Trump could invoke the Fifth Amendment — but only at the risk of political fallout. Trump criticized his Democratic campaign rival Hillary Clinton after some of her former staffers did just that rather than testify in a congressional probe into her use of a private email server. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth?” Trump asked at an Iowa rally in September 2016.

Trump has pleaded the Fifth before, however, during his 1990 divorce proceedings with his first wife, Ivana Trump.

Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, said the risks for Trump are enormous and that Trump’s routine distortion of facts would make speaking to Mueller under oath highly dangerous. “Given his proclivity toward confabulation, I have no doubt his lawyers would counsel strongly against him testifying,” he said.

Trump, of course, is no stranger to legal proceedings. A USA Today database counted more than 4,000 federal and state lawsuits involving him over three decades in business. He’s been interviewed repeatedly under oath, including a 2007 deposition in a libel case where he acknowledged that he determined his wealth based on his own gut. “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try,” Trump said in the case.

Bennett, the former Clinton lawyer, said Trump’s experience testifying in civil cases is in an entirely different league than what he’d face with Mueller.

“It’s one thing to be interviewed in a real estate thing,” said Bennett, “and quite another when you’re the president of the United States and you’re being interviewed in connection with a criminal investigation.”

Even if he never meets with Mueller’s team, Trump could still wind up discussing the Russia probe in an official setting. Congressional Democrats have signaled an interest in summoning Trump to address House and Senate investigators — which would not be unprecedented.

President Gerald Ford appeared before a House Judiciary subcommittee in 1974 to explain his pardon of former President Richard Nixon. President Woodrow Wilson hosted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the White House in 1919 to answer questions about the post-World War I U.S. peace treaty with Germany and the establishment of the League of Nations.

And in February 1862, according to the Senate historian’s office, President Abraham Lincoln met privately with the House Judiciary Committee to address accusations his wife had given a reporter an advance copy of his annual message to Congress.