President Donald Trump’s legal team is engaged in an ongoing discussion with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office over a possible presidential interview, but according to a source familiar with the negotiations, they have “not terribly advanced” in the past weeks.
In addition, two prosecutors working on the special counsel’s Russia investigation have left it and are returning to their previous posts at the Justice Department.
Fox News reported that the talks plateaued when reports emerged that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had discussed last year wearing a wire to secretly record Trump and enlisting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the President from office.
“This Rosenstein thing really threw them for a loop,” the source said in discussing the report’s effect on the talks.
The President’s legal team previously proposed that any presidential interview be limited to written questions and answers about allegations of Russian collusion with members of the Trump campaign. Trump’s attorneys rejected any questions pertaining to obstruction of justice, although the source indicated they may now be open to such inquiries “as long as they can be answered without jeopardy.”
Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack, one of the two prosecutors who left the Russia investigation, will continue to be involved in cases to which he was assigned, including the investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn who is scheduled to be sentenced in December, a spokesman for the special counsel said.
The spokesman added that prosecutor Kyle Freeny will end her detail to the special counsel later this month after which she will return to the Justice Department section she previously worked in.
Their departure seems to suggest that Mueller’s investigators are wrapping up parts of the probe to focus on critical remaining strands, such as an active grand-jury probe of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. Other lawyers who left the Mueller team earlier this year worked on parts of the investigation that are now concluded.
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