Don Testo*

Donald Trump under oath – as he faces with the Mueller investigation – is something the President treats with traditional bluster and bravado.

Given that he has uttered an alleged 2000 lies since taking ‘the oath of office’ the issue now is what he might do to himself when speaking with the special counsel.

And according to a report in Bloombergs, Trump under oath is “not pretty”.

As former, successful Trump litigant Timothy O’Brien writes, it’s time the Presidents lawyers grabbed their worry beads.

O’Brien authored ‘TumpNation’, the 2006 biography which saw Trump sue for allegedly misreporting his business records and underreporting his great wealth. Trump lost in 2011, but O’Brien saw him deposed for two days when he was questioned about his businesses, taxes, finances and relationships.

So how did he go?

Trump ultimately had to admit 30 times that he had lied over the years about all sorts of stuff: how much of a big Manhattan real estate project he owned; the price of one of his golf club memberships; the size of the Trump Organization; his wealth; his speaking fees; how many condos he had sold; his debts, and whether he borrowed money from his family to avoid going personally bankrupt. He also lied during the deposition about his business dealings with career criminals.

Trump’s poor performance stemmed in part from the fact that he was being interrogated by shrewd attorneys wielding his own business and financial records against him. But there were lots of other things that went wrong as well.

Here Comes Mueller

And any Mueller questioning will be far more perilous for the President.

Presiding over a chaotic White House “stocked with competing interests and egos, he’s mired in a complex investigation and he’s advised and protected by a relatively scanty phalanx of private attorneys,” O’Brien writes.

“If the president goes mano-a-mano with Mueller, the outcome of that encounter is likely to hinge on how careful, credible and capable he is under oath.”

Under oath? Does it matter for this President? On this occasion, very much so.

*Don Testo is a LawFuel contributing writer