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The U.S President Donald Trump withdrew from a scheduled meeting with the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. He made the decision after his lawyers delivered a list of questions from the team. These questions were to be asked by the president. The meeting date was set for January 27, 2018, and was to be held at the presidential retreat of Camp David. But Trump’s team received a list of questions to be answered, so the White House canceled the meeting. Trump hasn’t yet spoken to the team of Mueller about its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The president earlier said that he would be willing, even happy to speak to the special counsel and his colleagues.

The White House lawyers convinced Trump to steer clear of a direct meeting because they believe he would be a bad witness and might even put himself in legal jeopardy by lying to investigators. The January meeting plan fell apart when John Dowd (Trump’s attorney who resigned in March 2018) sent a letter to Mueller disputing his authority to even question the president. The Associated Press also reported that Trump’s legal team made the decision to torpedo the interview after Mueller’s lead prosecutor, James Quarles dictated regarding the phone a list of 16 topics the special counsel wanted to cover.

These topics included the interactions of Trump with former FBI Director James Comey, his knowledge of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s interview with the FBI and his involvement in a statement issued regarding the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a group of Russians linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dowd added that all answers could be found in the mass of already collected documents and witness statements. He added that the investigation had been a considerable burden for the president and his office.