Triggered Trump on Mueller warpath

Mueller threatens subpoena: After the N.Y. Times' list of Mueller's four dozen questions for Trump, the WashPost reported last night that at a tense meeting in early March, Mueller told Trump lawyers that if he declined an interview, Mueller “could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury.”

• Why it matters: "[T]he standoff could turn into a historic confrontation before the Supreme Court over a presidential subpoena."

The threat is vast: The questions (topics, really) stretch across Trump’s campaign, the Republican convention, the transition and the first year of the administration.

• Many of the questions include specific dates, reflecting the rich narrative Mueller has already assembled.
• A source very close to Trump said: “For the average human, nothing scares them more than legal issues. He. Does. Not. Care. His whole adult life has been spent in litigation. He's not afraid of high-stakes legal stuff. … He’s just going to start swinging and knock people’s heads off.”
• This is likely to include further steps to try to discredit the investigation with his base, a strategy he has been blatantly pursuing for months.

Bob Bauer — a former White House counsel under President Clinton and now a New York University law professor — told me the Times list makes it plain that the risks are too high for Trump to submit to an interview.

• "He is entirely unpredictable," Bauer said. "But I do not see him sustaining the hours of questioning he would face. And to some questions — such as his role in the Trump Tower matter and the fake press release he directed for Don Jr. — he seems unlikely to have good answers."
• Furthermore, and one of the reasons the list is so threatening: Some of the questions have no safe answer.

A former U.S. attorney tells me how federal prosecutors approach such an interview: "For each of the questions, there is already an elaborate follow-up question tree, supported by marked exhibits ready to be presented to refresh Trump’s recollection, impeach him, or otherwise test his credibility."

• The former fed continued: "The question tree has a flow: 'If yes, then [follow up] down this branch. If no, then f/u down this branch. If maybe or non-responsive, then f/u down this branch.' This is what we do. And no one is better at it than Mueller."

Paul Rosenzweig, a former Whitewater prosecutor, told the N.Y. Times that with that many topics, "that’s honestly a two-day interview. That’s 12 hours of questioning.”

• Another complication: The Daily Beast's Betsy Woodruff pointed out on MSNBC that Mueller is likely to take the leak of the questions by the Trump team as a "betrayal of trust."

The bottom line: Based on my conversations with insiders, a Mueller interview of Trump is unlikely but not impossible.