Trump refuses to commit to Mueller interview

President Trump said Wednesday it is “unlikely” he will have to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller for an interview, arguing that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia.

 

Trump repeatedly dodged whether he would submit to an interview with Mueller by citing his claim there was no collusion during the 2016 presidential election. 

 

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“We’ll see what happens,” the president said when pressed by a reporter on Wednesday. “When they have no collusion … it seems unlikely that you’d even have an interview.”

 

Trump was speaking during a joint press conference alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg following a meeting at the White House.

Multiple reports this week said that Mueller is likely to interview Trump in the coming weeks as part of the special counsel investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential race.

 

NBC News reported that Trump’s lawyers have discussed whether to ask for stipulations to the interview, such as answering questions in writing or signing an affidavit asserting the president’s innocence.

 

Trump’s comments are a shift from this past weekend, when he indicated he was open to speaking with Mueller. 

 

“It’s sort of like, when you’ve done nothing wrong, let’s be open and get it over with,” he told reporters at Camp David in Maryland. 

Asked last June if he would be “100 percent willing” to speak to the special counsel under oath about his interactions with ousted FBI Director James Comey, Trump told a reporter, “I would be glad to tell him exactly what I just told you.”

Trump on Wednesday pivoted from the prospect of an interview to criticizing the FBI for its handling of the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while at the State Department.

“When you talk about interviews, Hillary Clinton had an interview where she wasn’t sworn in, she wasn’t given the oath, they didn’t take notes, they didn’t record and it was done on the Fourth of July weekend. That’s, perhaps, ridiculous, a lot of people looked at that as a very serious breach,” he said.

Comey told Congress in July of 2016 that the bureau’s interview with Clinton was not recorded and that she did not swear an oath to tell the truth. But he added that it’s still a crime to lie to the FBI regardless of whether an oath was taken and that FBI policy is not to record interviews.

The FBI released notes from that interview with Clinton in September of 2016.

Trump went on to blast allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia, arguing that such claims have hurt his presidency.

“There was absolutely no collusion, everybody knows it. I’ve been in office for 11 months, for 11 months they’ve had this phony cloud over this administration, over our government, and it has hurt our government,” he said.

“It is a Democrat hoax that was brought up as an excuse for losing an election that frankly the Democrats should have won because they have such a tremendous advantage in the Electoral College,” he continued.