Update at the end, the President answered the question
Politico has reason to believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed the President to a grand jury out of the public eye. Prosecutors aren’t supposed to take action before a mid-term. That is according to guidance set by Eric Holder which are still in place. But a former federal prosecutor believes he knows how Mueller is spending the mid-terms.
Nelson Cunningham was once a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. He made the case for Mueller needing the interview with the President. The purpose would be to round out his investigation of collusion and obstruction. Mueller will want to know what the President knew and when he knew it.
Cunningham writes with informed speculation and points to how quiet everyone has gotten:
On August 15, Giuliani said Trump would move to quash a subpoena and went so far as to say, “[W]e’re pretty much finished with our memorandum opposing a subpoena.”
And then—nothing. Labor Day came and went without a visible move by Mueller to subpoena the president, and we entered the quiet period before the midterms. Even the voluble Giuliani went quiet, more or less. Mindful of the time it would take to fight out the legal issues surrounding a presidential subpoena, and mindful of the ticking clock on Mueller’s now 18-month-old investigation, many of us began to wonder if Mueller had decided to forego the compelling and possibly conclusive nature of presidential testimony in favor of findings built on inference and circumstantial evidence. A move that would leave a huge hole in his final report and findings.
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Then everyone grew quiet.
An important witness will be called to the Grand Jury. Politico had a reporter who overheard:
Thanks to Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn, we know that on August 16th (the day after Giuliani said he was almost finished with his memorandum, remember), a sealed grand jury case was initiated in the D.C. federal district court before Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell. We know that on September 19, Chief Judge Howell issued a ruling and 5 days later one of the parties appealed to the D.C. Circuit. And thanks to Politico’s reporting, we know that the special counsel’s office is involved (because the reporter overheard a conversation in the clerk’s office). We can further deduce that the special counsel prevailed in the district court below and that the presumptive grand jury witness has frantically appealed that order and sought special treatment from the judges of the D.C. Circuit—often referred to as the “second-most important court in the land.”
Nothing about the docket sheets, however, discloses the identity of the witness.
However, Cunningham describes the unusual speed with which the witness and the appeals were handled. It suggests this is not an ordinary witness. Trump’s sole appointee to the court, George Katsas recused himself. In the article, Cunningham explains why this recusal suggests the President is the witness.
The President’s lawyers deny it, and frankly, these reports have been false in the past. If history serves as a sign, this could be false too.
“The report in Politico is completely false,” Jay Sekulow told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “There has been no subpoena issued and there is no litigation.”
The witness could be Carter Page or Roger Stone. But Cunningham doesn’t think so. he states that the witness’s frantic appeals would not warrant such alacrity by the courts. They simply aren’t important enough.
UPDATE
President Trump said Wednesday that he has not been subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller, denying speculation that he’s fighting a secret legal effort to compel his testimony.
