President Trump might be willing to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller for “two to three hours” if federal investigators agree to certain conditions beforehand, a member of his legal team said Wednesday.
“We are going to ask for a narrowing of the questions. They are going to need to narrow, to a great extent, the questions,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who joined the president’s team of attorneys last month, told the Washington Post in an interview hours after Trump’s lead attorney, Ty Cobb, announced his plan to retire at the end of the month.
“I’ve done what I came to do in terms of managing the White House response to the special counsel requests,” Cobb told CNN.
Cobb was one of the earliest members of Trump’s legal team to encourage the president to cooperate with Mueller, even if it meant sitting down with federal investigators. His vacancy will be filled by Emmet Flood, a longtime attorney at Williams & Connolly who specializes in white-collar crime and represented former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment proceedings in the House.
Giuliani said Wednesday that the latest shake-up to Trump’s team of attorneys has not impacted ongoing negotiations surrounding a presidential interview with Mueller.
“Some people have talked about a possible 12-hour interview. If it happens, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “It would be, max, two to three hours around a narrow set of questions.”
On Tuesday, the Post reported that Mueller told Trump’s lawyers he could subpoena the president to appear before a grand jury if he declines to sit down with the special counsel. That warning reportedly occurred in early March, shortly before White House attorney John Dowd left his position as Trump’s lead lawyer.
In a separate interview with Fox News, Giuliani said he’s concerned about Mueller’s team approaching a sit-down with Trump in an “objective way.”
“Meaning, do they have an open mind to the fact that he may be telling the truth and Comey may be lying?” he said. “If they have an open mind to that, then this is something we would consider. If they don’t, then given all of the irregularities of this investigation we would be foolish to have him be interviewed.”
