últimas notícias

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, said about whether they would go public with a subpoena.

What do the investigators want to ask about?

Mr. Mueller is investigating two chief issues: Did the Trump campaign collude with the Russians, and has the president obstructed justice by interfering in the Russia investigation?

Investigators have interviewed nearly all the White House and Justice Department officials who were directly involved in the episodes under scrutiny in the obstruction inquiry. But Mr. Mueller is still seeking to speak with several witnesses about ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.

In particular, Mr. Mueller wants to learn what the campaign knew about WikiLeaks’s plans to release Democratic emails hacked by the Russians in the months before the election. As part of that inquiry, Mr. Mueller is closely examining whether one of Mr. Trump’s longtime associates, Roger J. Stone Jr., was a conduit between WikiLeaks and the campaign. Mr. Mueller is fighting a legal battle with an associate of Mr. Stone’s who is refusing to testify before a grand jury and hand over documents.

Will we ever learn who the person is?

Maybe. The person is most likely not barred from speaking publicly about the case, but because the proceeding has been sealed, the lawyers involved cannot discuss it. If the witness ultimately loses and the court orders jail time, then it would most likely become public.

Are these types of disputes typical in federal investigations?

Similar disputes often arise in cases in which prosecutors are trying to identify government officials who have leaked classified information to reporters. In those instances, reporters often refuse to answer investigators’ questions, forcing judges to decide whether to jail them.

In high-profile investigations that involve celebrity defendants or organized crime figures, witnesses who are loyal to the person under investigation occasionally refuse to cooperate with investigators. A decade ago, federal prosecutors asked a judge to jail the trainer of the baseball slugger Barry Bonds, who was under investigation for using performance-enhancing drugs. The trainer spent a year in jail as he refused to testify about whether he had given drugs to Mr. Bonds, significantly hurting the government’s case.