--- title: Trump Will Agree to Interview If Mueller Winds Down Probe description: President Trump's lawyers want the special counsel's office to promise to end its investigation within two months of an interview. canonical: https://time.com/5303806/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview-sixty-days/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-06-07T02:10:32.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-31T11:39:09.556Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump Will Agree to Interview If Mueller Winds Down Investigation og:description: Within 60 days. og:url: https://time.com/5303806/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview-sixty-days/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf68b28012fc495bd/69892f33e76ad2ae5f631db7/gettyimages-902836240.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Left, President Donald Trump at the White House on Jan. 04, 201 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Will Agree to Interview If Mueller Winds Down Investigation twitter:description: Within 60 days. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf68b28012fc495bd/69892f33e76ad2ae5f631db7/gettyimages-902836240.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Trump Will Agree to Interview If Mueller Winds Down Investigation > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Jun 7, 2018 2:10 AM UTC  Left, President Donald Trump at the White House on Jan. 04, 2018\. Robert Mueller on Capitol Hill in 2013. Left, President Donald Trump at the White House on Jan. 04, 2018\. Robert Mueller on Capitol Hill in 2013. Jabin Botsford—The Washington Post/Getty Images and Kevin Lamarque—Reuters  by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/)  ## Brian Bennett Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME. Jun 7, 2018 2:10 AM UTC President Trump’s lawyers want the special counsel’s office to promise to end its investigation within two months after an interview with the president, adding another demand to tense negotiations that have dragged on for months. “We got pretty close on the amount of time they would need to write a report, which roughly was about 60 days after they finished their investigation,” Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told TIME on Wednesday. When [Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team in April](http://time.com/5248465/donald-trump-lawyers-rudy-giuliani-special-counsel/), he boldly predicted he could get the case resolved in a matter of weeks. Linking an interview with Trump to a specific end date for special counsel Robert Mueller to [submit his findings to ](http://time.com/5230934/robert-mueller-ken-starr-investigation-donald-trump/)the Department of Justice seems to be an attempt to force things to a close. Once Mueller submits his report, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will then determine what to share with lawmakers and the public. Talks have stalled in recent days over Trump’s insistence that Mueller disclose all authorizations he’s been given by the Department of Justice as well as documents about an FBI informant who collected information about the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016\. At this point, those two requirements seem “insurmountable,” Giuliani said. “We’d have to see \[those\] before we would advise him on whether to testify or not.” Other topics under discussion are the length of an interview and whether it would be recorded. An audio recording would be “for everybody’s protection — theirs and ours,” Giuliani said. Mueller has reportedly been looking at whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to interfere with investigations into Russian contacts with his campaign. Trump tweeted on June 4 that he had the “absolute right” to pardon himself if he’s convicted of a crime, but Giuliani said Trump’s not going to take that step because he’s “done nothing wrong” and it could [prompt Congress to impeach him](http://time.com/5239719/rod-rosenstein-robert-mueller-firing-donald-trump-congress/). “He’s not going to do it. He’s not going to pardon himself. Nor would any president pardon himself. It would leave him completely maligned in history, and it probably would lead to some kind of action by Congress,” he said. Trump’s better strategy is “to defend himself and prove he’s innocent,” Giuliani said. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5303806/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview-sixty-days/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5303806/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview-sixty-days/"},"headline":"Trump Will Agree to Interview If Mueller Winds Down Investigation","datePublished":"2018-06-07T02:10:32.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T11:39:09.556Z","description":"President Trump's lawyers want the special counsel's office to promise to end its investigation within two months of an interview.","url":"https://time.com/5303806/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview-sixty-days/","keywords":["Donald Trump","russia","rudy giuliani","Robert Mueller"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf68b28012fc495bd/69892f33e76ad2ae5f631db7/gettyimages-902836240.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Bennett","jobTitle":"Bennett is the senior White House correspondent at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf68b28012fc495bd/69892f33e76ad2ae5f631db7/gettyimages-902836240.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Left, President Donald Trump at the White House on Jan. 04, 201","caption":"Left, President Donald Trump at the White House on Jan. 04, 201","creditText":"Jabin Botsford—The Washington Post/Getty Images and Kevin Lamarque—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5303806/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview-sixty-days/","name":"Trump Will Agree to Interview If Mueller Winds Down Investigation"}}]}] ```