The anti-George
by Tom Sullivan
Donald Trump cannot tell the truth. He always sounds as if he’s trying to bluff his way through an oral report on a book he never read. The last thing his lawyers want him doing is sitting for an interview with Robert Mueller’s investigators. Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported last night that was their advice in spite of Trump’s statements he would welcome the interview, even under oath.
Josh Marshall writes at Talking Points Memo:
Let’s be candid about what this means. The President is pleading the 5th while trying to avoid saying that’s what he’s doing. Let’s call it the de facto 5th. The constitutional law is clear cut. It’s not at all hypothetical. A sitting President has no blanket right to refuse to cooperate with a criminal investigation. Different dimensions of this question were litigated under Presidents Nixon and Clinton. The Courts were clear each time. The President has to comply with the law and with criminal investigations just like everyone else, though there may be certain areas of privilege. Presidents have been interviewed by special prosecutors, special counsels and independent counsels in numerous cases. The President is obviously guilty of obstruction of justice. He’s likely guilty of criminal conspiracy with a foreign power, though what if any statutes this would implicate is not clear to me. It makes perfect sense to refuse to talk. Perps do that all the time. It’s their right.
The Times reports, that his lawyers worry that Trump, with “a history of making false statements and contradicting himself, could be charged with lying to investigators.”
The sitting president’s longtime personal attorney, Marc E. Kasowitz, as well as Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who led the Trump transition team, reject the notion of the president agreeing to an interview. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, knows the risk better than most.
Marshall thinks it unlikely Mueller would indict a president. That doesn’t mean he might not indict members of the president’s family if evidence warrants. Trump has the power of the pardon, of course. But one can’t help but wonder, depending on circumstances, whether Trump would sacrifice his sons to save himself? Is he that base?
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