Trump will not talk to Mueller. Even if he faces a subpoena, he won't do it. We'll have one hell of a legal/constitutional showdown, but it won't happen. Why not? The Rudy Giuliani admission is Exhibit A.
Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about... shark week. Trump has maintained for a while that he knew nothing about the payments. Of the many things about which Trump knows nothing, that is not an element of the set. Giuliani now says Trump reimbursed Cohen. How can we reconcile those statements? It's very simple. Trump is the most shameless, craven liar in history. He doesn't just lie. He tells stupid lies, which are easy to catch, and obvious all along. Right after the election, I spent a series of posts discussing, among other things, how stupid you have to be to believe Trump's lies, drawing analogies between the Nigerian Prince email scam, and an elaborate con by Mr. Wednesday in the book version of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (see, for example, here and here). You can be something more than to total idiot and still fall for Wednesday's con, but you have to be, to quote Londo Mollari, "the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots," to fall for the Nigerian Prince scam. That's about how stupid you have to be to believe Donald Trump. Ever. Yes, Trump is a bad liar, and a careless liar, and you have to be a moron to believe him. In an election, that's fine because, to paraphrase my idol, George Carlin, think about how stupid the median person is, and understand that 50% of the population is even less intelligent. (Sorry, but I require precision in statistical terminology). It also isn't a crime to lie in a campaign.
You know when it is a crime? When you are under oath, and answering questions material to the subject. (Off-topic lies aren't perjury. Just ask Bill Clinton!) Donald Trump can't speak three sentences without lying. He just doesn't know how to do it. Why? What goes on in his Trump-brain to make him tell such stupid, obvious lies? I'm not the person to ask. I don't know who is truly qualified to answer that question. What is clear, though, is that Donald Trump can't stop lying, and he isn't smart enough to limit himself to plausible or uncheckable lies. Put him under oath, and not only will he perjure himself, he will perjure himself in ways that Mueller will catch. Rudy just outed a particularly stupid lie!
The probability that Donald Trump perjures himself is 1. As a statistician, I don't like ascribing probabilities of 1 to things, but... Trump will lie. Probability=1. The probability that Mueller already has the goods to catch him on whatever lies he tells? Let's call it p. However, let's suppose that Trump tells a lie that Mueller can't catch with what he already has at that point. Do you think he stops investigating, or that he looks into whatever Trump claims? Option B. Given the fact that Trump is a stupid liar, what is the probability that Mueller catches Trump after the fact? Let's call that q. So, the probability that Mueller catches Trump on perjury charges is q(1-p) + p. Both p and q are functions of Mueller's investigative skills and Trump's carelessness in leaving evidence. How do we assess these? Well, we've seen a shitload of evidence, along with Mueller's skill with handling Papadopoulos, Manafort, Gates and Flynn, along with those Russians. Combine that with the empirical observation that Trump is clearly stupid, and how high can q(1-p) + p get? Fill in values your yourself. It's a simple mathematical expression.
Add it all up, and Trump better mind those fuckin' p's and q's.
