Page Pate, a CNN legal analyst, is a criminal defense and constitutional lawyer based in Atlanta. He is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Georgia, a founding member of the Georgia Innocence Project, a former board member of the Federal Defender Program in Atlanta and the former chairman of the criminal law section of the Atlanta Bar Association. Follow him on Twitter @pagepate. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. Read more opinion articles at CNN.

(CNN) President Donald Trump is clearly worried. He pretends that information prosecutors provided in recent filings in the Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort cases "totally clears" him. But in reality, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have outlined a convincing case that Trump directed Cohen to make illegal campaign payments to conceal his alleged affairs.

Page Pate

Not so fast. This is not a witch hunt, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller is far from finished. Even if he has already gathered enough evidence to write his report about Russian collusion and possible obstruction of justice, he shouldn't send his team home until someone in his office interviews Trump. And he shouldn't do it through written questions submitted to Trump's lawyers, but rather face to face and in a setting where Trump must tell the truth or face criminal prosecution when he leaves office.

A personal interview would allow prosecutors on Mueller's team to confront Trump with the evidence they have gathered. While Trump consistently has denied that he colluded with Russia or obstructed justice, those public statements don't subject him to prosecution if they are lies. Lying in an interview with the special counsel's office would.

His lawyers know this, and that's why they fought off Mueller's earlier requests for an in-person interview with all sorts of conditions and restrictions. Any lawyer knows it's much more dangerous to sit down with prosecutors who have the benefit of knowing what other witnesses have said and whether any documents contradict the client's testimony. Such an interview is especially dangerous when the client happens to be a potential subject of the investigation.