One particular source of angst for the attorneys of Donald J. Trump, American president, is the prospect of The Interview. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has requested a sit-down chat with the president to hear his side of things on whether he or his associates colluded with Russian officials during the 2016 election, and whether he obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump's legal team is ever-changing, but no matter who's on staff at the moment, they can't seem to settle on whether he should be put in the same room with the granite-nosed investigator.

That ever-changing quality reared its head last week, when lead lawyer John Dowd and primary mustache Ty Cobb both departed the team. They were replaced by Emmet Flood—a powerful Washington defense attorney who has served as outside counsel to past presidents, including President Clinton during his impeachment proceedings—and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who seems to have undergone some changes in recent years.

Giuliani speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Getty Images

The latter has made a bit of a mess. He seemed to admit on national television that Trump knew about Michael Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels—an indication Trump and his team had lied incessantly about it up until that very moment—and that the Russia probe was a factor in Trump's decision to fire Comey. That's not a great move when you're suspected of obstructing justice, but then again, the president already said the same—again, on national television—soon after the deed was done. How is obstruction of justice still a question?

Anyway, Giuliani is still at it, and could be found in Every Media Outlet once again Tuesday morning. First, he got on the horn with the folks at The Wall Street Journal to explain why “every day [the legal team] swings a little different” on whether Trump should sit for the interview. But there was a more intriguing passage in the report:

Another consideration is how Mr. Trump would perform as a witness and whether he has the discipline to avoid unnecessary tangents that open himself to new questions. “Anyone can see he has great difficulty staying on a subject,” one person familiar with the legal team’s deliberations said ...

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... Preparing Mr. Trump to testify would be a serious distraction to his work as president, eating into time he needs to deal with pressing global issues, Mr. Trump’s lawyers contend.

In an informal, four-hour practice session, Mr. Trump’s lawyers were only able to walk him through two questions, given the frequent interruptions on national-security matters along with Mr. Trump’s loquaciousness, one person familiar with the matter said.

There seems to be an effort here from the Journal's sources to cast Trump's issues in the mock interview as borne of the many demands of his job. There's probably some merit to that, though the case might be more compelling under a president who didn't spend so much of his time live-tweeting Fox News.

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In truth, the bread slices of this excuse sandwich are a little more convincing: that the president has trouble staying on topic and is liable to go off on a (possibly incriminating) rant. This was reinforced on one of Giuliani's other stops on his press tour this morning, at CBS News:

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now on President Trump's legal team, told CBS News correspondent Paula Reid Monday that special counsel Robert Mueller's office has rejected proposals to allow Mr. Trump to answer questions from investigators in writing.

The president's legal team has signaled that this would be their preferred format for a possible interview, since it helps protect Mr. Trump from the possibility of lying or misleading investigators, which is a criminal offense.

Now that adds up. You need only look at Trump's response to a question about the Stormy Daniels payment last week to see how effortlessly and instinctually he lies. It is something beyond second nature, and it's not hard to imagine something false bursting from is lips as he sits across from Mueller before he even has a chance to consider whether it's a good idea. When you add in that the questions Mueller submitted to Trump's team—which were almost immediately leaked to the media—are ones to which the special prosecutor almost certainly already has the answers, the whole thing seems like an easy way for Trump to get caught lying to federal investigators under oath.

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Giuliani has repeatedly characterized The Interview as a "trap" in this respect. While there are certainly concerns surrounding federal law enforcement's strategies in some cases—particularly terrorism investigations, where there are often legitimate questions about entrapment—this doesn't seem like one of them. The trap wouldn't work if Trump was innocent and told the truth.

But Trump's past record in depositions is not promising in that regard. The most famous and somewhat hilarious example comes from journalist Timothy O'Brien, who wrote a book on Trump that the Billionaire Alpha Man deemed insufficiently adoring. Specifically, Trump thought O'Brien undersold how rich he was. He sued O'Brien and was compelled to testify to back up his claims about his wealth. Things, as O'Brien detailed in Bloomberg, did not go well for Mr. Trump:

Hammered by White and her deputies, Trump ultimately had to admit 30 times that he had lied over the years about all sorts of stuff: how much of a big Manhattan real estate project he owned; the price of one of his golf club memberships; the size of the Trump Organization; his wealth; his speaking fees; how many condos he had sold; his debts, and whether he borrowed money from his family to avoid going personally bankrupt. He also lied during the deposition about his business dealings with career criminals.

As O'Brien detailed, this was rooted in tough questioning from his team of lawyers. But it was also in large part because of who Trump is and how he operates:

Trump is impatient and has never been an avid or dedicated reader. That’s OK if you’d rather play golf, but it’s not OK when you need to absorb abundant or complex details ... Trump didn’t appear to be well prepared when we deposed him, a weakness that my lawyers exploited ... Trump, for example, had submitted a document to the court from his accountant outlining his assets and liabilities. He was proud of the document’s glowing conclusions but hadn’t seemed to have read most of it prior to sitting down with my lawyers–including a section that said that the report wasn’t a reliable gauge of his wealth. Trump seemed surprised when my lawyers pointed that out.

O'Brien even highlighted that Trump's hubris sometimes prevents him from letting his minions take the fall. The idea they would be operating independently of him—and thus would shoulder the liability, but also wouldn't be directly following his orders—can cause him to short-circuit and insist he knew every damn thing they were doing. This is not an ideal trait when, in the Russia probe, there's a strong possibility that Trump's associates were up to shady business genuinely without his knowledge. He might insist he did know out of a debilitating sense of pride.

Trump with Michael Flynn, who has pled guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with Russian officials. Getty Images

And then, of course, there's this famous bit of dialogue with one of O'Brien's lawyers, Andrew Ceresney, via CNN:

TRUMP: 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.

CERESNEY: Let me just understand that a little. You said your net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?

TRUMP: Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day ...

CERESNEY: When you publicly state a net worth number, what do you base that number on?

TRUMP: I would say it's my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked. And as I say, it varies.

It's hard to see how putting this person in a room with a seasoned federal investigator at the top of his game is going to go well for the president and his legal team. But it's not like much of his defense strategy has made a lot of sense up to this point.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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