Mueller team seeks interview with Trump

WASHINGTON — The special counsel’s office wants to talk to Donald Trump about the firings of James Comey and Michael Flynn, but as the president’s lawyers negotiate the terms and scope of a possible interview, they’re left with no easy options.

Balking at an interview, even a narrowly tailored one focused on obstruction of justice questions, risks perpetuating the perception that Trump has something to hide. But agreeing to discuss those matters with Robert Mueller’s team is risky for Trump, whose statements can be unpredictable and inconsistent. Weeks of dialogue between the sides have yet to resolve a question of extraordinary consequence: Will Trump, like many of his aides before him, get grilled by Mueller’s prosecutors?

“Obviously this is not just a legal problem, but this is also a political problem,” said Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth Starr as the independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation. “Life is not that simple. It requires a delicate balance between weighing the important legal issues that are involved but also recognizing the important political consequences as well.”

The negotiations have been closely held, but a resolution could arrive soon to avert the prospect of a grand jury subpoena, as happened to President Bill Clinton during Whitewater, or a lengthy court challenge reminiscent of the Watergate era.

Mueller’s interest in Trump himself has appeared focused on seminal moments of his administration even amid signs of an expanding, and intensifying, investigation. In the past month alone, Mueller secured the guilty plea of a Dutch lawyer for lying to the FBI, indicted 13 Russians accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential election and secured the grand jury testimony of a well-connected Lebanese-American businessman whose statements could open a new front for investigators.

Yet Mueller’s office has so far presented the president with more limited questions.

Prosecutors trying to establish whether Trump took steps to obstruct justice have conveyed interest in talking with the president about his decision to fire Comey as FBI director last May and about multiple conversations between the two men, including one in which Comey says he was encouraged to end an investigation into national security adviser Michael Flynn, people familiar with the investigation say.

They’re also interested in the February ouster of Flynn and the events leading up to it — the White House was warned weeks earlier that law enforcement thought he was vulnerable to blackmail — and in Trump’s pressuring of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his recusal from the Russia investigation.

Those topics may be narrow, but Trump hasn’t always helped himself.