Robert Mueller escalated his war on Donald Trump.
The special counsel made it clear he is out to destroy the President by any means necessary.
But then Donald Trump told Robert Mueller the one thing that made him run to a corner and weep.
Around Thanksgiving, Trump and his legal team completed their written answers to Robert Mueller’s questions about Russian collusion.
The President wisely refused to sit for an in-person interview, citing Constitutional concerns.
Mueller also backed down on a threat to subpoena the President to compel grand jury testimony.
Mueller knew Trump would fight any subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court and both sides would have faced massive risks.
Losing could weaken the Presidency for all time.
Conversely, Trump winning the case would mean no President would ever have to heed a special counsel’s request.
Everyone thought Trump’s written answers were the end of this story.
Not so.
Mueller and his team went back to the President after going over his written answers and requested a follow-up interview in person.
Trump’s team flatly rejected Mueller’s request.
This was a wise decision.
The only reason for Mueller to demand an in-person interview would be to set a perjury trap.
Mueller has Trump’s written answers.
The special counsel also has hours of testimony from witnesses about what Trump knew and said in private.
Finally, Mueller and his team can dig through Trump’s various public statements and tweets.
The only reason to sit Trump down is to catch him in a misstatement.
Mueller and his gang of 17 angry Democrats will pepper Trump with questions about events from years ago and hope he misremembers a date or who sat in a meeting.
When that happens, Mueller can claim the President lied to investigators.
Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation is a dead-end.
Leaks are starting to trickle out that the report will be “anti-climactic.”
The special counsel is preparing his allies in the media for the reality that his report found no evidence of Russian collusion.
That’s because there never was any collusion in the first place.
When Mueller agreed to Trump’s written answers around Thanksgiving, he thought he’d be able to pressure conservative journalist Jerome Corsi to plead guilty to false statement charges.
But Corsi rejected the deal when he found out Mueller wanted him to confess to lying about being the go-between for the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.
Corsi’s decision sent Mueller’s collusion case down in flames.
So Mueller went back to the drawing board.
He knows his task was to bring down Donald Trump by any means necessary.
That’s why Mueller resurrected the perjury trap.
This is his final gambit.
He has no other cards to play.
But with pressure mounting on Mueller to wrap up his investigation – the Senate will confirm a new Attorney General and Rod Rosenstein announced he was leaving the Justice Department – the special counsel cannot afford a protracted legal battle over compelling the President to testify.
We will keep you up to date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
