Trump Lawyers To Meet With Mueller Next Week: Reports

Amid increasingly shrill cries from Trump’s cheerleaders on Capitol Hill about FBI bias and as the President himself doubles and triples down on his attempts to pile pressure on the nation’s law enforcement apparatus, CNN is out reporting that Trump’s private attorneys are set to meet with Robert Mueller next week.

For months, the White House has insisted that the special counsel probe is winding down, despite multiple indictments and at least two cooperating witnesses. On Friday morning, Trump refused to rule out a pardon for Michael Flynn saying only this: “we’ll see what happens.”

Q: Would you consider a pardon for Micahel Flynn?

President Trump: “I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We'll see what happens.” pic.twitter.com/jSf9mtp50f

— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 15, 2017

Amid the controversy, Mueller has remained stoic despite calls for his dismissal. Firing the special counsel is of course not an option for Trump – or if it is, it’s a last resort. If he moves against Mueller now that actual indictments have come down, he would almost surely spark a constitutional crisis. It’s likely that support on the Hill for impeachment would grow considerably.

Earlier this week, NBC reported that Mueller’s recent moves suggest he’s angling for a possible obstruction charge. Recall this from Monday:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to piece together what happened inside the White House over a critical 18-day period that began when senior officials were told that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The questions about what happened between Jan. 26 and Flynn’s firing on Feb. 13 appear to relate to possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, say two people familiar with Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign.

Multiple sources say that during interviews, Mueller’s investigators have asked witnesses, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and others who have worked in the West Wing, to go through each day that Flynn remained as national security adviser and describe in detail what they knew was happening inside the White House as it related to Flynn.

Trump’s outside legal team led by John Dowd and Jay Sekulow is apparently trying to get a read on whether Mueller has exhausted his lines of inquiry or whether this is only the beginning of what promises to be a lengthy probe.

You’ll recall that earlier this month, John Dowd took the fall for the following errant Saturday tweet that appeared to implicate Trump in obstruction of justice.

Two days later, after the media variously lampooned the notion that a lawyer would be so derelict in his duty as to basically admit to a crime on behalf of his client (on social media no less), Dowd tried something else. Namely, he suggested that Trump is above the law:

The President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case.

That notion was immediately dismissed by multiple legal and intelligence experts.

In their piece detailing the upcoming meeting between Trump’s attorneys and Mueller, CNN notes that the focus will likely be on obstruction. To wit:

The Trump team’s hopes for an investigation nearing its end contrast with a widely held view by other lawyers representing clients who have been interviewed. Those attorneys say that some of the questions asked by investigators suggest an inquiry with much more work left to be done.

Some of those questions focused on the Comey firing and efforts over the summer by White House officials, including the President, to issue a public statement in the name of Donald Trump Jr. about a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians who promised information to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Both lines of inquiry could indicate more work being done on whether anyone has tried to obstruct the criminal investigation, lawyers involved say.

As a reminder, White House Counsel Don McGahn was recently interviewed by investigators presumably in an effort to find out more about his interactions with Sally Yates. For his part, White House special counsel Ty Cobb continues to insist that the probe is winding down.

You can draw your own conclusions here, but we would note that if this were truly nearing an end, it seems doubtful that the calls for Mueller’s ouster would be as loud as they are.