Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

All the yelping by Rudolph W. Giuliani and Jay Sekulow about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III setting a “perjury trap” for President Donald Trump ignores the fact that their client, who has tweeted and spoken 4,229 (and counting) alternative facts since the inauguration, knows how to tell the truth when placed under oath. Deposed in his libel suit against journalist Timothy L. O’Brien in 2007, Trump conceded 30 whoppers he’d told over the years—lies about his debts; his wealth; the size of his stake in a Manhattan development; what he charges to give speeches; the size of the Trump Organization; and so on.

Trump wasn’t entirely truthful in the deposition. You’d be disappointed if he had been, right? According to O’Brien, he lied about his business relationships with organized crime figures. But setting that fib aside for a moment, Trump isn’t so much afraid of being caught lying to Mueller’s investigation and prosecuted for perjury. Having grown accustomed over his long career of telling a dozen different versions of events, he’s mortified at the consequences of having to tell a binding truth that leaves him no space for obfuscation or creative doubling-back.


This is why he refused to release his income tax returns (after having promised to do so!). Releasing them would pin him down to a single, definable group of facts. Trump thrives in environments of the moment where he can pitch whatever version of reality that best suits his needs and temperament.

Trump reportedly thinks he can demonstrate his innocence if allowed to sit and jaw with Mueller, but I doubt it. What he likes to do is set down tangled, conflicting versions of the same story that confuse his critics (and investigators) and consume their hours as they attempt to unknot the conflicts. A classic example of this version-shifting followed the New York Times report on the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians peddling Hillary Clinton campaign-dirt to Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. It took Trump two full years, and multiple revised takes, to go from his original explanation that the meeting was about Russian adoptions to an unambiguous admission that the meeting was about dispensing Clinton dirt. Trump’s unique relationship with the truth makes a mockery of the idea that a prosecutor would have to construct a perjury trap for him. For decades now, Trump has behaved so recklessly you could say his main hobby is fashioning bespoke snares that fit his neck perfectly.

The truth sets the average man free. For Trump, the lie is the great liberator. Going into an interview with Mueller, Trump would know that his interlocutor has as good a handle on the facts behind the Russia investigation as he does and that all of his usual escape routes would be blocked. Even worse for Trump, Mueller is likely to know the background facts and chronologies even better than the president. Those who’ve ever told a lie (can I get a show of hands?) know that working under such conditions can be daunting.

For the past eight months, Trump’s attorneys have been dickering with Mueller to limit the scope and nature of the questions the special counsel could ask the president. “Mr. Trump’s lawyers do not want him answering questions about whether he obstructed justice,” a source tells the New York Times. Mueller, the paper reports, wants Trump to answer questions about his team’s contacts with Russia; coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin’s election meddling; and obstruction of justice issues, most notably the sacking of FBI Director James Comey. If Trump doesn't agree to a sit-down, Mueller might subpoena him, which Trump will surely fight in court.

Writing recently in the Washington Post, legal scholar Stephen Bates noted that while Mueller probably has the legal and constitutional authority to subpoena the president, it would be dumb to do so. “The president says no. Mueller goes to court. The judge orders Trump to comply. He still refuses. The judge, treating him like any other defiant witness, holds him in contempt of court. Then what?” Bates writes. Mueller can’t very well use contempt charges to throw Trump in jail if he resists. “Up against an irresponsible president, a responsible prosecutor will pick his battles,” Bates concludes: A subpoena death-match is not the hill Mueller wants to die on.

“This should be over with by September 1,” Giuliani said of the Mueller investigation this week. “We have now given him so many of the answers he has been seeking.” He wants to speed up the clock on the investigation because the Democrats might get lucky in the midterm elections and take control of the House and rev-up the current investigation of Trump that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has throttled. Nunes acknowledged in remarks at a political event that were secretly recorded and aired on Rachel Maddow‘s MSNBC show this week, that Republican control of Congress was Trump’s last defense against legal probes.

Fear of a blue wave also stirred Nunes to oppose the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Impeachment of Rosenstein was a hot ticket this summer among some Republicans of the Freedom Caucus variety, but Nunes branded it a bad idea because it might overload the congressional docket and interfere with the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

If Mueller has set a perjury trap—and what self-respecting prosecutor doesn’t keep one in a back pocket for emergencies?—it won’t resemble a rabbit snare as much as a fisherman’s trotline with multiple hooks, the better to catch the big and small fish who have schooled with Trump. Trump might be able to stop the interview, but he can’t stop the hunt.

******

Send subpoenas to [email protected]. My email alerts wave red. My Twitter feed waves blue. My RSS feed flies the pirate flag and slits throats.

