May 29, 2018

Giuliani: Trump Won’t Talk Unless Mueller Talks First

Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA

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I see that President Trump has a shiny new excuse for not talking to Robert Mueller:

President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani said Tuesday that Trump will not agree to an interview with the special counsel until prosecutors allow the president’s legal team to review documents related to the FBI’s use of a source to interact with members of Trump’s 2016 campaign….Giuliani has previously said that Trump has done nothing improper and is eager to talk to Mueller. On Tuesday, though, he said, he doesn’t want to make a call on whether Trump will sit down for an interview “until they decide whether they are going to give us the documents or not.”

This is like a mafia don refusing to talk unless the FBI turns over everything they have on the informants who have already cooperated. This is, I’m pretty sure, not standard procedure.

At this point, I’m genuinely curious why Mueller keeps putting up with this. Why not just subpoena Trump to testify in front of a grand jury and be done with it? Is he trying to show that he made every possible effort to procure voluntary cooperation first? It’s been months now, and it’s pretty obvious that Trump is never going to agree to an interview. What’s the downside of a subpoena?

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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