Rudy Giuliani said he and President Trump’s other attorneys are studying the latest proposal from Mueller that offered to narrow the set of obstruction-related questions the special counsel's team would ask the president. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo Giuliani: Trump to make Mueller sit-down call within 10 days

President Donald Trump and his legal team are likely to decide whether to grant special counsel Robert Mueller an interview with Trump within a “week to 10 days,” Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Thursday.

The former New York City mayor said Trump’s legal team will spend the weekend contemplating a new set of parameters proposed by Mueller for an interview with the president, then make a decision shortly thereafter.


“I think our decisions will get made in the next week to 10 days,” Giuliani told POLITICO, noting that Trump intends to reside at his property in Bedminster, New Jersey until mid-August.

But he added that the team is still considering declining an interview altogether, despite what he described as Trump’s ongoing desire to meet with Mueller. The two sides remain deadlocked over whether Mueller will get to ask Trump about possible efforts to obstruct the FBI’s investigation of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign.

Giuliani said he and Trump’s other attorneys are studying the latest proposal from Mueller that offered to narrow the set of obstruction-related questions the special counsel's team would ask the president. That proposal, per Giuliani, would also permit Trump to provide written answers to some inquiries. The two sides are still haggling over whether Mueller's team would be permitted to ask follow-up questions to some written responses, Giuliani noted.

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But Giuliani said the president’s team is still opposed to allowing Mueller to question Trump directly about obstruction and will insist that he limit his questions to the topic of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — which Trump also denies occurred.

“We don’t want questioning on obstruction. They would have to concede that,” he said. “It depends on how much they want his testimony on the other [topic].”

A decision about a presidential interview by the middle of the month would help keep Mueller on track for a possible report on the obstruction-related plank of his investigation by September, Giuliani said. He added, though, that the president’s team has no ultimate deadline for Trump to interview. Rather, he said, the burden is on Mueller since the special counsel is the one trying to craft a report.

One outspoken lawyer who's been advising Trump, Joe DiGenova, said Trump shouldn't submit to an interview at all and called the ongoing talks a "kabuki dance."

Mueller, he said, can't possibly narrow the scope of his questions enough. "They don’t even have the authority to ask him about Russian collusion," DiGenova said.

Despite his analysis, though, DiGenova said it wasn't a miscalculation for Trump's legal team to engage in the back-and-forth discussion.

"They’re not making a mistake by entertaining it," he said. "They’re trying to be nice."

The special counsel’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.