Mueller reportedly raised possibility of subpoena for Trump
During a meeting with members of President Trump's legal team on March 5, Special Counsel Robert Mueller told them that if Trump declined to speak with federal investigators, he could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, four people with knowledge of the encounter told The Washington Post.
John Dowd, at the time Trump's lead personal lawyer, then erupted, the Post reports, telling Mueller this "isn't some game. You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States." In the aftermath of the meeting, Trump's lawyers debated how to move forward, with Dowd ultimately resigning, and Mueller's team agreed to give Trump's attorneys more details on the topics prosecutors wanted to discuss with the president. One of Trump's lawyers, Jay Sekulow, then put together a list of 49 questions he believed Trump would be asked, three people told the Post, which included queries about the firings of former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Those questions were obtained by The New York Times, and published Monday.
Sekulow and Dowd both declined to comment to the Post, but Dowd confirmed to The Associated Press that Mueller's team had raised the possibility of forcing Trump to testify. Since the meeting, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani had joined his legal team, and Giuliani told the Post on Tuesday he has a "totally open mind on what the right strategy is, which we'll develop in the next few weeks."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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