White House legal team considers Trump-Mueller meeting in desperate bid to end Russia probe

President Donald Trump's legal team is seriously weighing the possibility of the president meeting with Special Counsel Bob Mueller in an attempt to hasten the end of Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Politico's Darren Samuelsohn wrote Thursday morning that a senior White House official confided to him that if Mueller has not made a move by Thanksgiving, Trump's legal team is considering volunteering the president for an interview.

The president's attorneys believe that a sit-down between Trump and Mueller will bring about the end of the Russia probe and "dispel the cloud of suspicion" around the presidency.

However, as Samuelsohn noted, "A meeting with Mueller could bring serious risks for Trump, exposing him to questions about everything from potential obstruction of justice over his firing of FBI Director James Comey to what Trump might know about Kremlin support for his presidential campaign."

But the official to whom he spoke said that there's no reason to think Trump faces legal risk by taking the meeting.

“Whatever happens with regard to whether or not, or how, the special counsel might want to interview the president, there’s no reason to expect that would be combative,” they said.

In June, the president said that he's "100 percent willing" to testify to Mueller under oath, but Trump has a long history of lying under oath. In one 2007 deposition, Trump uttered 30 provable falsehoods in two days of testimony.

Mueller was appointed in the wake of Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey to investigate Russian election tampering and the possibility that Trump attempted to obstruct justice by firing Comey.