To understand the alleged questions special counsel Robert Mueller wishes to ask President Trump – as first published by the New York Times on Monday – contemplate the naval action “angles and dangles.”
Before a U.S. Navy submarine begins its patrol or mission, its crew conducts “angles and dangles” maneuvers. This involves shaking the boat from side to side and up and down so as to dislodge anything that is not properly stowed. This ensures any unstowed items hit the deck before a battle situation in which noise could give the submarine’s position away.
Of course, sometimes the maneuver doesn’t work and something only dislodges after the exercise when the submarine is running quiet, attempting to avoid detection. If in a battle or covert action situation, such an incident compromises the submarine’s safety.
Mueller’s list of questions is the legal equivalent of an angles and dangles exercise that fails.
Put simply, the questions are designed to get Trump’s team to shake slightly, but not too heavily and in that absence of heavy shaking, find false confidence and then advise Trump to sit down with Mueller.
Mueller’s dangled questions address Trump’s knowledge of what contacts members of his campaign may have had with Russia, his state of mind in firing former FBI Director James Comey, and handling former national security adviser Michael Flynn. But they ignore forensic questions on other important matters. There are no questions, for example, as to the Trump organization’s proximal connectivity to Russian organized crime syndicates beyond a specific Moscow construction project. Nor are there questions over the funding basis for Trump’s investments, nor questions as to Trump’s relationship with Russian officials during the 1990s.
Why are those questions excluded? Team Mueller hopes that Trump will read the New York Times article and think “Aha! this isn’t that bad, let’s do an interview and then get the investigation wrapped up!”
As Pat Buchanan explained last weekend, Trump would be making a very dangerous mistake in sitting down for that interview. After all, if he bites on Mueller’s dangles under oath, the special counsel may have him for dinner.
