i was going to say, carol made the point mueller is not going to limit himself to this list of questions. mueller is not just a lawyer. he s a political animal. he s held political appointments been in washington a long time and understands how the game works. he understands he s at risk of getting fired by the president of the united states. we should assume that i m not saying i have knowledge of this, but there is every reason to believe that mueller would want to hold back the most damaging information that he has found until very late in this process. and so i would assume that if he had found very damaging stuff, he wouldn t necessarily be previewing it at a meeting weeks or months before he might ever sit down with the president. so we should view these questions as not only months old but probably deliberately curated by mueller and his team. right. i want to harry reid to you what clint watts, an msnbc contributor, former fbi be agent
to, in typical situations the whole notion that the president might not voluntarily cooperate with an investigation about our electoral process seems like political suicide. but those days are over. and as you say, the president is clearly going to his base and saying things like that, 49 questions is so many. you re right. so many topics. and you know, we re no longer in normal times where that is considered an outlier. i think there are three reasons that there strategy is effective at least for right now. that could change down the road as we learn more from mueller. the investigation is incredibly complicated and engulfs.many players, a lot of different trump associates a lot of different russians. it s hard to keep their names straight. it s a complex investigation. trump has pretty powerful players on his team, members of
the lawful administration of justice and we just to take care that the laws are faithfully executed as the constitution of the united states says. speak of ways in which the president can behave in a normative way we would be used to, in typical situations the whole notion that the president might not voluntarily cooperate with an investigation about our electoral process seems like political suicide. but those days are over. and as you say, the president is clearly going to his base and saying things like that, 49 questions is so many. you re right. so many topics. and you know, we re no longer in normal times where that is considered an outlier. i think there are three reasons that there strategy is effective at least for right now. that could change down the road as we learn more from mueller. the investigation is incredibly complicated and engulfs.many players, a lot of different trump associates a lot of different russians. it s hard to keep their names straight. it s
sekulow then began writing down questions that he extrapolated from the comments that mueller s deputy made to him in a march 12th conversation. right. so this is all being channeled, this is a sort of meeting and a conversation that s then channeled through one of trump s attorneys and is now out in the public. that s how we sort of know what we currently know? correct. you know, a lot of people are breathing heavily, you know, this is the list, the end all, be all list that mueller is going to ask trump. i highly doubt that mueller would limit himself to these questions. as they were written by trump s lawyer. based on your reporting, i ll come back to you guys in a second, david and harry. one more question here. based on your reporting, how likely do you there it is that they essentially decline? i think it s highly likely they decline at this point. that could change.
i want to bring in, we have carol leonnig who has a by line on that piece in the west who broke that story i was just reading. carol, what did you learn about what sounds like quite an intense meeting between the president s lawyers and mueller? yes, this was an interesting meeting that seems to keep producing interesting news. it was march 5th. the president s then lead lawyer and colawyer sat down with mueller in his office to basically talk about whether or not they were going to do the interview. a lot of things happened. some of which we ve already reported. this is the meeting where mueller tells trump s lawyers that trump is not a criminal target of his investigation at that point but just a subject. now we re learning that in that meeting, mueller raised the possibility not in a threatening way but kind of a veiled threat of i can subpoena your guy if you don t want to voluntarily bring him in. it caused not harsh words but some tense conversations about how the mueller inv