Can Trump really refuse to answer Mueller's questions?

Don't bet on it

President Donald Trump.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

For months, President Trump's lawyers have been confidently assuring him that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election was about to wrap up. It'll be done by Thanksgiving, they promised him. Definitely by the end of 2017. Any day now, it'll be over.

With those predictions came an implicit (or perhaps explicit) reassurance: He's not going after you, sir, you have nothing to worry about. And indeed, the idea that he wasn't personally under investigation has been nothing short of an obsession with Trump. He repeatedly asked former FBI Director James Comey whether he was under investigation, and when he fired Comey last May, he took the time in his brief letter to write, "I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation." In July he told The New York Times, "I'm not under investigation. For what? I didn't do anything wrong." In November he told the paper, "I'm not under investigation, as you know." "Everybody tells me I'm not under investigation," he said last month. "Maybe Hillary is, I don't know, but I'm not."

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Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect magazine and a blogger for The Washington Post. His writing has appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and web sites, and he is the author or co-author of four books on media and politics.