President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday morning that questions by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team about whether he obstructed justice amount to a “setup & trap.”
“There was no Collusion (it is a Hoax) and there is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap),” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “What there is is Negotiations going on with North Korea over Nuclear War, Negotiations going on with China over Trade Deficits, Negotiations on NAFTA, and much more. Witch Hunt!”
Trump’s tweet comes after the New York Times published a leaked list of questions Mueller would like to ask the President, several of which were related to possible obstruction of justice actions. Trump, responding to news reports about the leaked questions, said Tuesday that “it would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened!”
Trump’s fulmination on Wednesday comes as the President’s lawyers are preparing for a legal showdown with Mueller, according to sources familiar with their thinking.
Trump’s legal team is bracing for the dramatic possibility that Mueller would subpoena the President, setting up a collision that could force a lengthy court fight and test the legal limits of the President’s power all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Mueller has raised the possibility of a presidential subpoena in at least one meeting, according to two sources. But some of the President’s legal advisers are gambling that Mueller would not go that far.
CNN’s Evan Perez, Gloria Borger and Pamela Brown contributed to this report.
