Illustration by Tom Bachtell

At some point in the next few weeks or so, unless President Donald Trump stages a constitutional crisis—something that, given his habits, can hardly be ruled out—he will almost certainly have to take questions from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The details—whether the interview will be in writing or in person, and, if the latter, where it will be, who will be present, and whether it will be recorded on video—have yet to be settled. (Replies via Twitter will presumably be disallowed.) “I would love to do it,” Trump said last Wednesday, just before leaving for Davos, “subject to my lawyers, and all of that.”

That is a significant caveat: on Thursday, the Times reported that, last June, Trump decided to fire Mueller, but was held off from doing so by the White House counsel, Don McGahn. (“Fake news, folks,” the President said, in response.) The conditions of Mueller’s employment are not incidental to his investigation. His most consequential questions for Trump might not be about Russian influence over American voters but about the power that the President of the United States believes he has to control, or to abrogate, the rule of law.

To that end, Mueller might ask Trump why he has, or has not, fired various people. He might start with James Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., who was running the inquiry last May, when Trump dismissed him. Trump gave several explanations, before offering that “this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia” was “a made-up story” and that Comey was “a showboat.” Trump’s firing of the man who was investigating a matter that involved his campaign is what made the appointment of a special counsel inevitable. Now Mueller has the capacity to look not only at the Russia case but also at other malfeasance he may find along the way, including possible financial crimes and, in particular, obstruction of justice.

Mueller also will likely ask Trump why he fired Michael Flynn, his first national-security adviser, and what assurances he might have given him at the time. Flynn was already in legal jeopardy, because he had hidden his contacts with Russians and because his lobbying firm had taken money from Turkish interests without reporting it. Comey testified that Trump nonetheless asked him to go easy on Flynn. Mueller has now reached a deal with Flynn, under which he pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., and attested that some of his contacts were directed by at least one member of Trump’s transition team.

Trump has also suggested, at various times, that he was close to firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation because he had been part of the campaign. (Sessions had his own problems, after making misleading statements to the Senate about his Russian contacts.) Indeed, Trump has said that, had he known that Sessions would recuse himself, he never would have appointed him. Does the President imagine that the job of the Attorney General is to protect the law, or to protect him? Last week, the Justice Department confirmed that Mueller’s team had interviewed Sessions. They also reportedly spoke to Mike Pompeo, the head of the C.I.A., and Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence. All were apparently asked whether Trump pressured them in regard to the investigation. If Mueller has these men’s statements in hand, he can see if Trump’s answers match theirs.

The President might not care. He has said that he has an “absolute right” to control the Justice Department and “complete” pardon power. Speaking to reporters last week, he mocked his critics: “Did he fight back? . . . Ohhhh, it’s obstruction.” Often, for Trump, fighting back has meant just saying that everything is Hillary Clinton’s fault. Indeed, if Mueller gets Trump talking about Clinton, it will be hard to get him to stop. When one reporter asked Trump if he would be interviewed under oath, he noted that Clinton had not been when the F.B.I. questioned her about her e-mails. But lying to federal investigators can be a crime whether you’re under oath or not.

Trump has complained all along that the Russia investigation is just a Clintonite plot, and, aided by congressional Republicans, he has been remarkably willing to attack the F.B.I. as an alleged co-conspirator. Recently, the President has been tweeting about what he calls the case of the “FBI lovers.” Last year, Mueller took a senior agent, Peter Strzok, off the investigation after learning that he had sent anti-Trump texts to an F.B.I. lawyer, Lisa Page. They do sound disappointed by Trump’s election. (“Omg I am so depressed.”) But when, last week, Senator Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin, pointed to an obvious joke about a “secret society” in the texts as evidence of a corrupt pro-Hillary cabal in the Bureau, it was a reminder that, as the G.O.P. strains to protect the President, something in the Party has broken.

Meanwhile, Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, spent the week talking up a memorandum that the committee staff had put together. Trey Gowdy, of South Carolina, who spent years wandering the byways of the Benghazi affair, was also involved. The memo was shared only with House members, and reportedly alleges that the Russia investigation is tainted at its core, because, in an application to surveil Carter Page, a Trump-campaign associate, the F.B.I. made use of a dossier that had been partly paid for by the Clinton campaign. The memo, which Democrats claim omits key information, is said to attack Comey and Andrew McCabe, the Bureau’s deputy director. Trump, for his part, has been working to discredit McCabe on the ground that his wife, who ran for office in Virginia, received campaign donations from a PAC affiliated with Terry McAuliffe, the state’s then governor and a Clinton ally. “Terry is Hillary,” Trump said. In another turn, Axios reported last week that Sessions had tried to get Christopher Wray, the new F.B.I. director, to fire McCabe; Wray refused.

Trump’s strategy seems obvious: to create confusion, suspicion, deflection, doubt, and, above all, noise. But, if he does sit down with Mueller’s team, once the first question is asked there will be an interval of silence that only the President can choose how to fill. Will he try to turn the interview against Mueller? If Trump thinks that Mueller can be scared off by the prospect of being fired, however, he will have misunderstood not only the laws that restrain any President but the terms of his own employment. This time, Trump could be the one to lose his job. ♦