Has Mueller Subpoenaed the President?

Thanks to some careful reporting by Politico, we may have stumbled upon How Bob Mueller Is Spending His Mid-Terms: secretly litigating against President Trump for the right to throw him in the grand jury.

As a former prosecutor and Senate and White House aide, I predicted here last May that Mueller would promptly subpoena Trump and, like Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr back in 1998, bring a sitting president before his grand jury to round out and conclude his investigation.

Thanks to Politico's reporting, we may know what Mueller has been up to: Since mid-August, he may have been locked in proceedings with Trump and his lawyers over a grand jury subpoena - in secret litigation that could tell us by December whether the president will testify before Mueller's grand jury.

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."

Just two days later, the lower court judge cured the flaw, the witness re-appealed, and by October 10 the witness was once again before appellate court.

If the witness were the president himself - if the matter involved an appeal from a secret order requiring the president to testify before the grand jury - then Judge Katsas would certainly feel obliged to recuse himself from any official role.

If Mueller were going to subpoena the president - and there's every reason why a careful and thorough prosecutor would want the central figure on the record on critical questions regarding his knowledge and intent - this is just the way we would expect him to do so.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/10/31/has-robert-mueller-subpoenaed-trump-222060