Robert Mueller Has Nearly 50 Questions for Trump

interview with President Trump. In an interview with W mu R Manchester, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now a member of the Trump legal team, call for an end to the Mueller investigation altogether. And I think the American people are saying, okay, enough, put up a shut up. I mean, you got something, Okay, let's go ahead. If you don't, let's get it over with. Joining me is Bradley Moss, a partner at Mark said, brad, let's

start with the timing. The Muller team doesn't leak, and there are these questions have been in the possession of the Trump team since March. Why do you think of

being leaked now? Well, I think and this is all speculation because None of mus truly know who leaked it or their ultimate underlying motives, but the consensus speculation is that this is someone from within Trump's orbit, maybe not necessarily on his legal team, of people who have access to him and do his team's documents and understanding, who are trying to dissuade the President from sitting down with Mueller.

They have seen the detailed nature of these questions, they know how Muller would do follow up questions, and they have the same type of concerns that John Dowd apparently had about having the President sit down with Mueller and address these questions. The President does not have a great history providing clear and simple and concise answers in depositions, and the idea of putting him in the room with Muller and his team in this circumstances just not what

any credible lawyer would advise. I like that term consensus speculation. I may borrow that from you. So these are just basedly topics. Will the questions be more detailed and include references to documents or the testimony of others? Give us an example of what a question might sound like. Sure, so these are we would started. We can kind of describe,

as you know, the starting off point questions. You use this broader, more general type of question to start the line of inquiry, and then, depending on how the individual as such as the President in this circumstance, answers it, you follow up and you follow the facts, and you follow the explanations where they lead you. You can, of course site back to existing documentation you may already have

in this type of situation. It's almost borders on axiomatic that they would have provided the president's lawyers with some kind of understanding of which documents would be an issue that not. I don't see Muller's finding any real basis here to try to stand back the president. I don't get helps him in any way. So if there's gonna be emails, if there's gonna be memoranda, I think the

president will already know about it in advance. But you use that initial frame setting question like the ones we saw in the New York Times report to start your lines of inquiry. You follow them from there. The questions cover a broad range of subjects, and obstruction of justice is prominent among them. What is Muller trying to find

out here? Well? At least two things. One is his original underlying premise and mandate, which is was there any criminal coordination or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, whether officially part of the Russian government or people working

on their own. Um. That was the original premise, and you stiff still are numerous questions in there in terms of the Trump Tower meeting in summer of SI, in terms of that very eye opening question about what the president knew about contacts between his campaign, particularly Paul Manafort, and Russian nationals in terms of providing assistance to the campaign.

So that was the obvious first step. But the other parts, and you see it throughout these questions are how the President responded both internally and in response to media reports about the about the investigation, when he's firing Comey, when he's pressuring the Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecus himself, when he's trying to stop Jeff Sessions from resigning, when he's pushing for possible pressure to fire the Special Council.

What Mr Mueller is trying to determine as if the President had corrupt intent in how he was trying to push back on the investigation, and if he did, that would be a basis for Mr Mueller to recommend congressional impeachment inquiry into the issue of obstruction of justice. Yeah, favorite question of mine was it the Special Council asking about the Special Counsel? What consideration and discussions did you have regarding terminating the Special Council in June of what?

What surprised you? Any surprises here for you? Well, from the collision angle, I mean, I think what race everybody's eyebrows was this question about assistant people from the campaign, particularly Paul Manafort, seeking assistance from the Russians. That really hasn't been publicly discussed or there's been no come out in any of the indictments or any of the official

disclosures by the Special Council. So if he's asking that kind of question to the President, everybody's againting consensus speculation is that Mr Mueller has something how subsittive, how concrete, we don't know, but he has something to indicate that there's more to the story about how much the campaign was willing to try to work with Russian nationals to get assistance in the campaign, whether it's hacking of d NC emails or releases of stuff of emails and documents

through wiki leaks. We don't know yet. That is raised so many eyebrows is what does Mueller have there? Is there more to the story and does that tie in with the enormous pressure that Mueller's prosecutors seem to be putting on Manaford in the in the cases against him. Yes? Absolutely, And the odds are you know watching what Mueller's team of Mulish tam sorry, what Manaforts team has been doing recently. They're throwing everything at the wall that they can to

try to weaken Mueller's ace against him. Odds are you know? Even the judges said this. Odds are Manaforms going to jail for at least some period of time if he takes this the trial. What he's trying to do with his emotions he dismissed with his emotions to suppress with the motion he just filed last night, in terms of

trying to get an investigation into the league. If he's trying to pick and not and weaken the case against him in any way he can to leverage it for the best deal, best plea deal he can ultimately get before he flips. You speculated in consensus speculation that this was to send a message to show the president, you know how how these questions are tough. And but Trump tweeted this morning, no questions on collusion. That's the word

he loves to use. What does that reveal about the President's knowledge of what he's facing, Uh, it's it's always hard to know how much of that, how much of what he tweets out and how he describes it is more of a political act and political theater as opposed to reflecting what he truly understands. I think he has done a fantastic job of quote unquote working the reps.

He has made it through his media allies and his own tweets, through his political operation at the White House to beat back against the investigation, claiming it's biased, that it's out of control, so that he's done it in a way that no matter what comes out of this, even if there is some type of evidence, some type of indictment that proves there was some manner of quote unquote collusion of criminal coordination, that there's a portion of

his political base that won't care. They'll think it's all it doesn't it's all deep state. Hi. Jenksdale never believe any of it. And so long as he continues to work the rest like this and make these claims the way he does, he's going to be politically able to survive. About forty five seconds. Here is your conclusion that after this he will not talk to Robert Mueller without a subpoena. If he listens to his lawyers, there is no way

on earth he sits down with Robert Mueller. Absentence pena, not a chance, No lawyer would ever agree to it. Those are the key words. If he listens to his lawyers, which it seems that he has not been doing. That's Bradley Moss. Thanks brad, He's a partner marked Z. Yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department and A T and T Time Warner made their closing arguments in an antitrust case

that could forever change the media industry. Speaking with reporters at the start of the trial, A T and T CEO Randall Stevenson said that the Justice Department's case defied logic. It stretches the very reach of antitrust's law beyond the breaking point. All of this in an effort to stop this combination. Joining me is Bloomberg New his legal reporter Eric Larson, who was in the courtroom. Eric, there have been lines to get into the courtroom at different times

during the trial. What was it like for the closing arguments? It was a lot like at the start of the trial. There were long lines. There are people who are paid to wait in line for some of the more high powerful people that have They're all day long. Uh. It filled up two court rooms. There was an overflow court room as well, and it was it was a lot of high spirits on both sides. Everyone seemed thoroughly confident.

The attorneys had to consolidate six weeks of testimony into an hour and a half argument, which is nothing for a lawyer. What were their final appeals to the judge? Well, the government came back to its original argument over and over again, which is simply that a T and T after this murderer, would have too much bargaining power by having control over time, warners, turner broadcasting content, which is

really powerful popular. Uh. And they say that this type of vertical merger, even though it's it's not usually the kind that they challenge, it's exactly what they need to be looking at in this new sort of media landscape. And of course the company said that this is the kind of combination that they need to do in order to compete with companies night like Netflix. The stakes are really high for both sides. Here tell us a little

bit more about that. Well, A T and T is really hinging its future on this, uh this deal, billion dollar deal. Um. They say that, you know, the future of their company is sort of at stake and being able to compete with companies like net flips and Amazon that are able to deliver their content directly to consumers. And they have a lot more information and knowledge about their consumers, which also gives them more power in terms

of advertising. Uh. So they're really staking a lot on this and there uh there said they were pretty surprised that they were challenged by the Justice Department on this. Uh they thought that it might sail through. Um, but that wasn't the case. And what about the Justice Department?

Might this change the way it does business in the future. Well, I think that the Justice Department is definitely sent a signal that this type of so called vertical merger or two companies on the same chain are are are combining rather than two direct competitors combining with that these types of deals, which may have sailed through before, are no longer going to be so easy to get approval on.

So um, if other companies like A T, T and T and Time Warner are considering similar deals, they're definitely going to be watching this very very closely to see, uh what the government is going to do in terms of they lose this case. And of course that would be a huge setback for the government and it took a leap with this case, and it would have been factfire for sales. So Judge Leon will announce his decision

at a June twelfth hearing. Any indications that he's been leaning one way or another, well, it's always hard to predict what a judge is thinking, of course, But throughout the trial against six weeks testimony, you know, the people who were at the hearing sort of seemed to agreeing amongst themselves a lot. That he was questioning the government's

case over and over again in different ways. Um. You know, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to rule against them, but he did seem to express some confusion about, for example, the expert report by the governments that formed the backbone of their case. Um. And actually there were some sort of gotcha moments that the defense was able to produce during the trial to show potential errors in the government's data,

that sort of thing. Um. So uh. And on the day of the closing arguments yesterday, the ceo is of both of the companies had flown in to attend and and they did seem to be in pretty high spirits talking with the lawyers before the proceedings got underway. So the judges leaving time, he's making his decision on June twelve, he's leaving time before the merger deadline for an appeal. So we assume that a T and T time Warner would appeal. Is it likely that the government would appeal

as well if they lose. Um, I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I think that they would definitely want to see the case through, at least through an appeal, but that that's really just a guess. I mean, it's uh, it's something that they'll have to wait and see, I suppose, but they haven't said. So. This has really drawn a lot of attention. As I mentioned at the top, when you look back at what you've seen or heard about what stands out in the

trial as most unusual. Well, I think, like we mentioned earlier, it was unusual to a lot of people that the government challenged this vertical merger to begin with, especially because a sort of a similar vertical merger with Comcasts and NBCU UM. You know, there was there was a challenge to that, but it was resolved through uh an agreement, and and one could have expects that have something like that might have been reached within this case as well.

But it is interesting that, for example, the experts from both sides were able to come up with completely opposite views of the marketplace and the data that they used to come to opposite conclusions, even though they're both expert economists hired by each side. The battle of the experts, Eric, Eric, do you do you believe that that's where it's going to you know, the real decision is going to be for the judge and to which expert he believes or

more of the other testimony about a minute here. You know, I really do think that he's going to focus in on these two experts. Uh. They came up one one said that the government's experts said that the deal would raise prices for consumers by more than four hundred billion dollars a year for pay pay TV subscribers was the company's experts said that they would end up saving five

billion dollars a year or more or subscribers. So and it came down to studies and and and data that some sides that was cherry picked and the other set was not. So it will really be up to this judge to decide which which expert. He believes quite a difference between the two experts testament. Many thanks, Eric, that's Bloomberg News Legal recorder Eric Larson. 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