Mueller testimony addendum

When President Donald Trump contradicted his own attorney general and declared on Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller “should not testify” before Congress, he caught his inner circle by surprise.

  Politico

Have they not met Trump?

A day later, more than a dozen people from Trump’s close orbit downplayed in interviews the prospect that the president’s weekend tweet about Mueller should be taken as an official warning.

Trump does not actually intend to assert executive privilege and block the special counsel from testifying as soon as next week.

How about executive pressure?

“Bob Mueller should not testify,” Trump’s Sunday afternoon tweet declared. “No redos for the Dems!”

[...]

“He is not signaling anything other than, as an innocent man so found by Mr. Mueller, he just wants this over. He’d like to govern. That’s all he’s saying,” Joe diGenova, an informal Trump legal adviser, told POLITICO.

He'd like to rule, but his objection wasn't just about ending this whole thing.

Rudy Giuliani, a Trump personal attorney, said he hadn’t spoken to his client about the subject but downplayed the idea that Trump had foreshadowed a dramatic clash with Congress. “I think I’d have to hear the words ‘We’re invoking executive privilege’ to know they’ve come to that conclusion,” Giuliani said in an interview.

Others around the president explained that Trump is still not foreclosing an option to fight back against House investigators, and that he may yet invoke an executive privilege claim to halt potential testimony by Mueller or his deputies.

Where's the executive privilege? Mueller wasn't discussing anything with Trump. Trump wouldn't talk to him. And he didn't invoke executive privilege to keep anyone else from talking to Mueller.

Trump legal allies say the Justice Department would have standing to prevent or limit Mueller’s testimony on executive privilege grounds.

Emmet Flood, the White House lawyer handling all Mueller matters, previewed the potential executive privilege fight ahead in a letter to Barr sent in mid-April and released publicly last week. Flood’s letter indicated that Trump doesn’t consider the release of the Mueller report a waiver of executive privilege claims for future testimony.

I don't care what Trump considers it, I want to know the legality.

[DiGenova] identified one potential area of limitation [on Mueller's testimony by Barr]: negotiations between Mueller’s team and the president’s lawyers about a potential interview with Trump. (The interview wound up being conducted in writing.)

[...]

Another source familiar with the Trump legal team’s thinking added an additional caveat: Even if Mueller was no longer a government employee, the 74-year old former FBI director could face a penalty if he defied a DOJ order.

“He could lose his bar license because he’s disobeying the instruction of a former client. Or the White House could get a court order stopping him from testifying if he refuses to follow the president’s instruction,” said the source familiar with Trump legal team’s thinking.

But are they correct?

Former Obama Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller called it “ridiculous” for Trump to argue that Mueller should opt out of testifying to Congress. He added that the DOJ can’t stop Mueller from speaking out about most parts of his work once he’s a private citizen.

“I know of no instance where the department has been able to affirmatively restrain anyone from executing their First Amendment rights, especially if they were responding to a lawful subpoena,” Miller said.

[...]

“The administration keeps sinking lower and lower. And I imagine they really will try and stop Mueller from testifying,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview.

Looks like Jamie has met Trump, et al.

Mueller’s testimony could inflict damage not only on Trump but Barr as well. People close to Barr have expressed concern about how Mueller might characterize a conversation the two men had about Barr’s March 24 four-page memo summarizing the special counsel’s findings.

Do they have reason to believe Mueller's characterization might be different from Barr's? Isn't that the only thing Lindsey Graham is willing to have Mueller testify to?

The Trump campaign has texted supporters urging them to sign a petition arguing that it is “TIME TO INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS.” Such petitions are typically used to collect the contact information of supporters and used later for fundraising.

Suckers.

DiGenova said he expected Trump or his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, will be speaking with Barr about Mueller’s testimony “just to make sure that everybody is on the same page.”

But he added that [Trump's] tweet itself was no change in administration policy. “No big deal,” he said. “The president tweets all the time. I’d assume now after three years people would be used to it.”

Sick of it, more like.  What a state we have gotten ourselves into when the public ignores the president's tweets because they're just meaningless yammering.  No big deal.

Stinging testimony from Mueller that accentuates his written findings — or even tactical signals that he intended his report as a call for Congress to act — could fuel calls for impeachment proceedings that Democratic leaders, fearful of political overreach, have sought to quash.

Republicans never concern themselves about political overreach.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.