TIME: Vladimir Putin Set a Trap for Robert Mueller in His Press Conference with Donald Trump

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Vladimir Putin Set a Trap for Robert Mueller in His Press Conference with Donald Trump
Simon Shuster

Reporters in Moscow usually hear the same brush-off a few times a week: Send us your request in writing, and we’ll deal with it as we see fit. But when President Vladimir Putin urged Special Counsel Robert Mueller to “send a formal and official request to us” about the indictment he brought on Friday, it was not the lazy reflex of a Russian bureaucrat who doesn’t want to answer questions. It was a calculated attempt to pull the Mueller investigation onto a playing field that Putin can control.

Here’s roughly how the Russian leader would like things to unfold: Now that the Special Counsel has indicted a group of 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the U.S. elections, Putin wants to see the evidence, ideally translated into Russian and sent to the authorities in Moscow, all in accordance with an obscure law-enforcement treaty that the U.S. and Russia signed nearly two decades ago.

Russian investigators would then take the evidence, question the accused and send Mueller back a report, which he can go and stick right up his file cabinet. This, at least, is the roadmap Putin laid out during his press conference on Monday with President Donald Trump, who referred to it as an “incredible offer.”

Read more at: http://time.com/5340695/putin-trump-press-conference-robert-mueller-russia/