Mueller Shows Interest in Interviewing Trump (Audio)

an interview with President Trump. It's a natural part of the course of Mueller's thorough and painstaking investigation, and now several news sources are reporting that the interview could happen very soon, possibly within weeks. Trump has said he's willing to be interviewed, but his attorneys apparently do not agree. They're discussing compromises to avoid an in person encounter between Trump and Mueller. According to NBC News, My guest is

Bradley Moss, a partner at Mark Zaid. Brad is there any doubt that the President will have to submit to an interview with Mueller under oath or a grand jury subpoena will be issued. I think it's pretty fair to say that, at least in some context, he's going to be questioned. UM a simple responding to written questions isn't going to be enough. I can't fathom that Mr Mueller would view that as sufficient. Given the nature of this investigation.

The question, of course becomes, what's the context, how limited and restricted are the questions in the topics, and what kind of negotiated agreement both the president's personal attorneys and Mr Mueller's team um come to beforehand so as to make this a voluntary interview under oath, as opposed to Mller actually haying to take the steps of issuing a grand jury subpoena and bringing the President before a grand jury.

We should I mention that legally Trump could take the fifth, but there's a political risk, correct, I mean, it would be political suicide more or less for the President at this point to refuse to be interviewed, to take the fifth and refuse to answer questions, given how he is very broad boldly and broadly and definitively stated there was no collusion, there was no crime, there was no obstruction.

For him to now try to invoke the fifth while something he is legally permitted to do would nonetheless look horrible from political perception standpoint, I would just devastate him in terms of his ability to govern. So let's talk now about what you talked about before the format. Let's talk a little bit more about that. So you just said that you think that Mueller would not accept written

question and answers. There's the possibility of an open ended in person interview or a more restricted in person interview. Is he likely to agree to a restricted interview? In other words, only certain categories would be brought up. I guess it depends on what Mr Muller knows that we

obviously in the public don't know about. So how much information he has already gotten from other depositions, other interviews, grand jury testimony that gives him context, and how much he truly needs to question the president as opposed to simply trying to go up through a narrow scope of questions to see how the President responds, but already having

everything else he already needs in the background context. So I, personally, if I were at the president attorneys, I certainly would never agree to that open ended interview, especially with a client like Donald Trump, who knows where his mind could go into this context, who knows how it's go off on a tangent. You wouldn't want him to do that.

So for Mr Mueller, it depends on what he already knows and how much he truly needs a certain factual information from the President as opposed to just trying to get a sense of how the President would answer to certain questions. Is it likely that Mueller would do the interview himself or have one of his top people do it. It's a good question. I think Mueller, out of respect for the office, would want to handle it largely hisself, as opposed to giving it to one of his dream

team attorneys. Certainly they could handle it, but I think he would want to try to offer some measure of respect in the prestige of having it to be the special Counsel, not someone else questioning someone with the office of the President itself. So I think it would be a fair assumption to make that he'll do it himself. Many people may not realize that it wasn't just President Bill Clinton that submitted to questioning under oath or interviews.

Um Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford all either submitted to interviews or testified before a grand jury. Why is the testimony before a grand jury

so much more difficult? Uh? In a grand jury, you can't have your lawyers there by and large, So for especially with a client left Donald Trump, again, you've got to be worried a bit about how he'll answer certain questions, whether or not he'll go off on a tangent, if he doesn't have his lawyers there to guide him a bit, which you do for any client who has that type

of speaking style. Um. But you also have the issue you can Missilian book, the Fifth Amendment to protect to protect yourself against the crimination in a grand jury proceeding, unlike in any other interview. So it's would be a more bigger risk to have the president sit before grand jury. I mean Bill Clinton did it. Bill Clinton was a trained attorney and he stumbled in a grand jury proceeding.

So if he's going to stumble, you gotta be worried if you're Donald Trump's lawyers about how the president will handled it. And look look what that happened after after his stumble there, that led to his um the impeachment proceedings. Now, and I've had a minute here, what would be the top question on your mind if you were Robert Muller, what would be the first question you wanted to get answered, did you know about the June meeting at Trump Tower?

And if you did, what was the context of your knowledge? You know there are in just about thirty seconds, explain the prep for a normal deposition is so rigorous. What it the preparation for a deposition like this be? You would have to and part of it depends on what the client is actually done, But you have to prepare them for any number of angles that the prosecutor will

approach in terms of how they last questions. You have to get them to get their answers down to simple, concise and direct responses and not to go off on a tangent, because that's how you get into trouble. Thank you. Bradley Moss, partner at Mark Say did a federal appeals courts strike down an FCC decision to preempt state laws that restricted the expansion of municipal broadband? That's correct. So under the Obama era, FEC attempted to prevent states from

preventing municipalities from engaging in municipal broadband. So it's basically telling states that they couldn't tell their cities not to get involved in municipal broadband. And the six Circuit ruled that that decision overstepped the boundaries of federal law because generally federal agencies don't have the ability to tell states what they can and can't do with regard to portions

of the state apparatus, meaning the municipal governments themselves. That's a little bit different, I think than states reaching out and trying to regulate private entities like Comcast and Verizon. General rules of preemption state that when UH federal and state policy directly conflict, the supremacy clause gives the tie to the offense. Let's talk about the different ways that

the states are approaching this. In New York, one bill proposed would require internet providers to adhere to net neutrality principles to land state contracts. Assemblywoman Patricia Faye He said the restrictions would apply even if the behaviors took place outside New York. Is that taking the issue a little too far? So? I actually think this is the most

interesting of the many attempts by states to enact net neutrality. Uh. What I think is really interesting about it is the fact that it's using an indirect method, right, It's not telling providers directly that they have to engage in net neutral principles, but it's making it a voluntary condition of receiving UH state funds that may actually survive general preemption rule in the way that direct state legislative command wouldn't.

But then it raises the problem under the dormant commerce clause, whether New York can use these conditions in order to reach behavior beyond New York States borders. I think they'd be in much better shape if they simply limited the condition to UH activities that the companies undertake while in New York. So in California, there are two bills, and one of them California State Senator Scott Wiener introduced, and that would only apply to behavior within the state, So

that you think has a better chance. I think that's probably the best chance of all of them. Um. And it's worth noting that it's not the first time that states and Feds have clashed over something like US the UH.

Minnesota attempted about ten years ago to regulate void providers like Vontage on the theory that this looks walks and talks like a traditional telephone services, it happens to be over the Internet rather than over traditional phone lines, and so states can regulate UH telephone services should be able to regulate void providers as well. UH. The SEC said no and tried to preempt state regulation, and ultimately they

were successful in that. So DAN, with a large state like California, no matter what a loss say is about it applying only within the state, it can reverberate outside the state. And so if there are bills in California and New York and let's say Washington, will that affect

the Internet significantly? Yeah? So it might write because assuming that California succeeds in UH tying its funding to the practice of net neutral principles while operating within California, you been, a company like Verizon would have to UH decide whether it's possible to segment its network management practices and practice one set of rules in California and another set of rules for the rest of the country, or maybe it's

easier just to apply the California policy across the United States. Right. That's why California winds up the facto setting things like air quality management standards, right, because they hold auto providers to a very strict rule, and companies find it easier to manufacture cars across the country to meet California standards than to create one set of cars to sell in

California another for the rest of the nation. And just last month, more than a dozen states asked the Supreme Court to block a California law that required egg sellers to abide by certain guidelines in the treatment of hands. So uh, then their argument was that attempts to regulate industry in other states. So I guess we'll see where that goes. Um. Now, let's talk about the lawsuits that

are coming. Because the FCC released the final text of the net neutrality rule last week, so the lawsuits challenging can proceed. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is leading a coalition of other states attorneys general in a lawsuit. Which has a better chance of success these lawsuits or

the state laws? That may be a very tough question, but yeah, so um, the state legal challenge, I think is going to map the legal challenge that Silicon valuing other industry players are bringing against it, which look at challenge the FCC's action on two grounds. One is the legal ground saying the FCC lacked legal authority to reclassify

broadband as an information service. My sense is that's probably a non starter of an argument, given that the SEC was simply returning to the rules that governed prior to two thousand fifteen. The other UM set of arguments or procedural hurdles the idea that if the UM the FEC could do what it did, but it did follow the appropriate procedural requirements when doing so. Depending on how that argument shakes out, that maybe the only chance UM that

opponents have. But as we saw in the last round of these debates, right the administrative law is always stacked in the agency's favor. There's a sense that as long as the agency is crossing seas and dotting the size the way it's supposed to, these types of policy questions generally get left to the agency rather than to the court to decide. So I think a legal challenge is

going to be an uphill battle. What about Senator Edward Markey from Massachusetts, who's leading an effort to launch a Congressional Review Act resolution in an attempt to reverse the net neutrality rules that PIPE put into place. Yeah, I think as a matter of politics, it's a pretty smart move because it's trying to get each member of Congress on record is UH discussing whether they are supportive of

or opposing to the SEC's action. That said, I don't expect any substantive change because for the Congressional Review Act to succeed, it has to pass both the House and the Senate and either be signed by the President or have his veto overridden. I don't see the President supporting

this at all. Dan. More than twenty states introduced broadband privacy rules last year in response to Congress's decision to roll back Obama era FCC rules that required Internet providers to ask permission before collecting personal information for commercial uses. How is that going as far as the states? How

are they succeeding with that? Well? So that's actually much more interesting question of federalism because historically we've allowed states to experiment with UH data privacy and data security issues at the state level that we haven't done with regard to things like broadband network management practices. So there's a sense in which states have been operating by doing this, are operating within the confines of regulatory authority that they've

traditionally had. That having been said, I think it's possible to read the UH recent Net Neutrality Order as preempting even some of those as well, because the the language of the in the preemption portion of the statute or the the order seems to reach really really broadly UH to prevent anything that's inconsistent with the SCCS approach here. So we'll see all that developed. And dan I mentioned that the final rule is out of the final text. Have you looked at it to see if it varies

to any degree from what was proposed? I've not done aligned by line comparison, but it looks to me like the general thrust of the order UH fits and matches what German Pie released just prior to the Thanksgiving break. I think to the extent that there's minor variations, it's responses to the points made by the dissenting commissioners in order to make sure that the order is UH as

robust as it can be. And in about twenty seconds here do you find that the net neutral reality rules are now crossing partisan lines, that people are both Republicans and Democrats are having problems with the lack of rules. So it's UM. I think one of the big points that came out was seeing that Nebraska became the first Republican leading state to join this state rebellion against the FCC. So alright, suggest it. Thank you, Dan, Sorry to have to leave it there. Dan Lyons, a professor at Boston

College Law School. Well, this is Bloomberg. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg.