Buell: ‘No Question That If Mueller Wanted to Subpoena the President’ He Must Get Rosenstein’s Approval

RUSH EXCERPT: 
BERMAN: "Jessica Schneider, watch that very closely. In the meantime we want to bring in Samuel bul, former federal prosecutor. I’ll come back to Rick Gates in a second. Sara Murray reporting that the president is now saying he would still like to sit down with investigators from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. He thinks he can handle it. He thinks he can work this is the exact quote Sara Murray was told, this after CNN was told by lawyers and people close to the president they were afraid of the president sitting down with investigators because they were fearful he could get caught lying. What do you make of the president at least suggesting publicly he be willing to testify? 
BUELL: "Well, John, I’m skill skeptical there’s going to be an interview. There’s a good cop, bad cop routine going on. The president has been in his public statements acting as if this is no big deal, open book. Let’s answer the questions, I’ve got nothing to hide. That plays really well politically, particularly with his base. I have no doubt behind the scenes his lawyers are driving a very hard bargain with Mueller over the terms of the interview, probably a bargain that has term that are acceptable to Mueller. I think the most likely outcome here is an impasse with Mueller after which the president claims he was perfectly willing to be interviewed and special counsel is muzzled as I always is and isn’t able to explain that actually the terms were not acceptable."
BERMAN: "So an impasse. What happens after an impasse? Do they pack up papers and go home or do you think the special counsel would seek a grand jury subpoena? 
BUELL: "That is really the big question, John. I think if he were an independent counsel under the old regime, Ken Starr, I think he would probably go ahead and do that. Now under the special counsel scheme where he has to report directly to political appoint ees at the Justice Department in the first instance Ron Rosenstein who is obviously a White House appointee, maybe in some peril, it becomes a much trickier question whether to issue that subpoena. There’s no question that if Mueller wanted to subpoena the president — the grand jury, he would have to get rod Rosenstein’s approval for that and have to show that it was essential to the investigation and persuade Rosenstein and others this wasn’t simply an effort to see if trump could be caught in the record telling a lie. So I think we might not even know what those conversations are if they don’t ultimately lead to the issuance of a subpoena."
BERMAN: "You honestly think one possibility is this ends without being told what happened, without the president meeting with the lawyers, that’s very interesting to me. Let me get one more point on Rick Gates because this hearing is going on shortly, former campaign aide to the president about to walk in for a change of counsel. How do you read this? This is the third set of attorneys. That seems like a lot of attorneys to cycle through. It does have people speculating he might be close to cutting a deal. 
BUELL: "That’s certainly a possibility John, but it could be going the other way as well. These could be lawyers — sometimes when lawyers have been I am ploring a client to reach a deal because they are convinced that it would be a disaster for the client to take the case to trial, then the client is just on stinant about his innocence and about having his day in court and lawyers feel like they can’t continue to represent him in those circumstances because they don’t think it’s in his best interest. It could be going that way or the other way. I will say it’s not automatic when there’s a change of counsel that you have to have a hearing before a judge. Sometimes that’s something that can just happen fairly routinely with paperwork, especially when you have a retained counsel not appointed by the judge. Why do you need to involve the judge? It suggests there have been some problems in the representation that need to be aired with the court and again that could be cutting either way."