A Mueller mystery: How Trump dodged a special counsel interview — and a subpoena fight

President Trump walks to Marine One to leave the White House on Jan. 14, 2019. Credit: Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

It was March 2018, nearly 10 months into his Russia investigation, when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a man of few words, raised the stakes dramatically in a meeting with President Trump’s lawyers: If the president did not sit down voluntarily for an interview, he could face a subpoena.

In the months that followed, Mueller never explicitly threatened to issue a subpoena as his office pursued a presidential interview, a sit-down for which the special counsel was pushing as late as December.

But with that prospect hanging over them, Trump’s legal advisers conducted a quiet, multipronged pressure campaign to avert such an action and keep the president from coming face-to-face with federal investigators — fearful he would perjure himself.

View the complete March 28 article by Philip Rucker, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.