We knew those questions were leaked by the Trump team. When the New York Times announced that they’d received several possible questions that Mueller might ask Trump, the source was never in doubt, only the motive of the Trump lawyers doing the leaking. Elie Mystal mused that they might come from the Giuliani side in a sly effort to impress upon Trump exactly how serious this is. But that theory never really sat right with me.

Could Giuliani, with a prosecutorial and Biglaw background, really pull such an amateurish stunt? Would he really want to expose work product to the scrutiny of the press and risk showing the world the slapdash nature of Trump’s legal defense? As one former prosecutor pointed out, the leaked questions couldn’t even get basic grammar right!

Questionable strategy and grammatical applesauce? By GAWD… that’s Jay Sekulow’s music!

Obviously, this all comes back to Jay Sekulow. He’s Brainy Smurf after Brainy already landed on his head 20-30 times too many. Reports suggest that he’s the one who wrote the questions that ended up in the Times, and theoretically the mastermind behind the leak, intended to suggest that Mueller has overstepped his mandate (which some of us suspected all along). From the Washington Post:

The president and several advisers now plan to point to the list as evidence that Mueller has strayed beyond his mandate and is overreaching, they said. “He wants to hammer that,” according to a person who spoke to Trump on Monday. “Mueller is in Kenny Starr territory now,” said another Trump adviser, referring to how the controversial independent counsel investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s real estate deals in Arkansas ended up examining the president’s lies about his sexual relationship with a White House intern.

Funny you should throw Starr under the bus like that, because Kenny “Go Bears” Starr is actually one of the very few “serious” legal analysts who actually buys this tripe about Mueller exceeding his mandate. Watching Starr take to the cable news circuit and bash himself will actually be appointment television for the next week. One more sad chapter for him — becoming the Republican’s definition of a bad lawyer.

But no, the Trump team plan is to point to a list of possible questions that they wrote as proof that Mueller has gone too far. Astonishing. On the other hand, this is a populace that allowed an administration to draw up its own narrative about WMD production and use that lie to embark on the longest-running conflict in American history, so there may be some method to this madness.

So why might Trump’s people feel a particular urgency to build a case against Mueller right now? According to the Post, because Mueller used the “s” word and made John Dowd’s head snap around like Regan MacNeil:

But Mueller responded that he had another option if Trump declined: He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter. Mueller’s warning — the first time he is known to have mentioned a possible subpoena to Trump’s legal team — spurred a sharp retort from John Dowd, then the president’s lead lawyer. “This isn’t some game,” Dowd said, according to two people with knowledge of his comments. “You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.”

I suppose golfing is a kind of work. Do we really think Dowd said this? He’s obviously a hothead, but he has to know better than to think presidents can avoid legal inquiry just because they’re busy. If this actually happened, I desperately want to know what Mueller’s next sentence was.

We’re wading into troubling constitutional waters now, folks. There are some who believe a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime and, by extension, cannot be forced to testify to a grand jury. This theory hasn’t been tested before because Bill Clinton agreed to testify voluntarily. If Trump’s team wants to force the issue, we’re going to have a legal showdown that could put the office of the president permanently above the law, accountable only to the partisan impeachment and removal process.

That’s a fight that Trump’s lawyers don’t want to have. However, it’s one they’ll probably have to take on if this clumsy leak fails to generate enough popular sentiment to support firing Mueller. And it won’t.

Mueller raised possibility of presidential subpoena in meeting with Trump’s legal team [Washington Post]

Earlier: Why Did Trump’s Lawyers Leak The Mueller Questions? A Few Theories.

Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.