President Donald Trump's attorney says his legal team would go to court to prevent any effort to subpoena the president.
Read the full letter, via The New York Times, here.
"When I made a decision to [fire Comey], I said to myself, you know, this Russian Federation thing with Trump and Russian Federation is a made-up story by the Democrats", Trump told Holt.
The memo also addresses 16 topics that, according to Dowd, Mueller's team "desired to address with the president in order to complete your investigation on the subjects of alleged collusion and obstruction of justice".
If, for example, the president were to bribe or threaten witnesses, or just even encourage them to lie, that would be obstruction of justice, as I see it. Trump's lawyers' claim that this "would amount to obstructing himself" seems specious.
The last time a special counsel was investigating a White House occupant, President Bill Clinton between August 1994 and February 1999, then counsel Kenneth Starr's office spent US$52 million in the 4-1/2 years.
In the letter, the legal team argues that a charge of illegal obstruction is moot because the U.S. constitution empowers the president to, "if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon".
President Donald Trump claimed the special counsel probe of his campaign ties to Russian Federation was "totally unconstitutional" in one of his most outrageous tweets yet.
"Ensuring that the office remains sacred and above the fray of shifting political winds and gamesmanship is of critical importance", Trump's lawyers wrote, explaining that the Constitution grants the president the power to "if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon".
Members of Trump's legal team had disagreed about whether to do the interview, and the team ended up formally responding on January 29 with the letter, which included materials from documents the special counsel already had in its possession and contained constitutional objections to requiring the President's testimony, CNN reported, citing sources briefed on discussions.
Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee says he's not going to defend Giuliani "because those aren't words that I would use".
Editor's Note: For more about the special counsel and how the office operates, please see FactCheck.org's "Special Counsel Q&A'". Another is item #15: "The President's interaction with Attorney General Sessions as it relates to the appointment of Special Counsel".
Giuliani suggested Sunday that, despite the president's broad powers, a theoretical charge of obstruction may be possible in some cases.
The question of whether the president will testify has been scrutinized for months. Nixon, 1977 Also: "Trump 2018". They have been trying to sway Mueller away from seeking a subpoena to force Trump to testify before a grand jury.
The letter did not explicitly describe the possibility of Trump pardoning himself. They wrote that Trump took "severe and consequential action" in firing Flynn over his Russian Federation contacts and ordered the investigation into his actions be continued. (Emphasis added) It's not clear what, if anything, Trump's lawyers mean by "here".
"As only one of two people left who could become President, why wouldn't the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Department of "Justice" have told me that they were secretly investigating Paul Manafort (on charges that were 10 years old and had been previously dropped) during my campaign?"
