Way back in 1972, when I was a freshly minted Special Attorney with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Justice Department, my fellow newly hired colleagues and I attended a lecture at Main Justice given by John Dowd, a well-regarded veteran prosecutor. His topic was the then little known and almost never used Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

Dowd explained in detail the vast sweep of the statute and described the mind-boggling powers that Congress had conferred on us. In those days of limited federal jurisdiction, we had a hard time processing what Dowd was saying. According to him, Congress had effectively federalized almost every form of state criminal activity and had provided draconian and almost unimaginable punitive measures designed to strip racketeers of their liberty and property.

Frankly, we thought Dowd was crazy. As he described it, RICO seemed too good to be true. But it wasn’t. We soon learned that Dowd wasn’t nuts but a prophet, and, within a few short years, RICO became a standard prosecutorial bat that we enthusiastically swung with both hands.

I lost track of Dowd until recently when he became co-lead counsel of President Trump’s legal team in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation. To my dismay, Dowd and his co-counsel, Ty Cobb, have followed a course of total cooperation with Mueller. According to media reports, they have voluntarily produced over a million pages of documents and made administration witnesses available for interrogation. All of this was premised on the stated belief that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia and that the President did not obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.

Dowd and Cobb even went so far as to suggest that the President might voluntarily submit to interrogation by Mueller.

And that’s when I went back to thinking that Dowd must be bonkers. Given the toxic, highly partisan atmosphere in Washington, Mueller’s obvious conflict of interest due to his ties to Comey, and the Hillary Clinton fan club that comprises Team Mueller, it is irrelevant whether Trump is innocent.

With the declassification of the Nunes Memo and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s referral to the Justice Department of British spy Christopher Steele for possibly lying to the FBI, we now know that Comey’s FBI and Obama’s Justice Department corruptly colluded with agents of the DNC and the Clinton campaign to illegally spy on the Trump campaign and administration. All of this raises the question of the true purpose of Mueller’s investigation. Is it to get to the truth or is it to continue the Comey FBI’s and Obama DOJ’s previous mission to take out Trump by any means necessary?

Even before the release of these explosive documents, in the Philadelphia Inquirer I have time and again warned against cooperating with Mueller. If Trump was my client, I wouldn’t give Team Mueller the time of day without a court order. I would make them crawl over hot coals all the way to the Supreme Court and back before I would give up a single scrap of paper. And when they wanted the next scrap of paper, I would make them do it all over again.

Under no circumstances would my client voluntarily submit to questioning.

Needless to say, I have been dumbfounded by the President’s lawyers’ let-it-all-hang-out stance. But now, at long last, there may be a thin ray of sanity breaking through.

According to the New York Times, Dowd has counseled the President to refuse to be questioned by Team Mueller. The Times, of course, opines that Trump is a known liar who would face prosecution if he lied to the prosecutors. In reality, as I have said before, even if Trump told the absolute truth, he would be still be charged. Why? Consider the following:

After he was fired, Comey illegally leaked memoranda of his conversations with Trump for the express purpose of having a special counsel appointed to investigate Trump. It has recently been reported that Mueller was interviewed by Trump to fill the vacant FBI Director’s position. But the day after Trump decided not to name Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then appointed Mueller the special counsel to investigate Trump.

Pause and think that one over. Out of the thousands of eminently qualified and conflict free lawyers available, Rosenstein picked Mueller, Comey’s friend and former colleague who had just been rejected by Trump,  to decide whether Trump or Comey is telling the truth. Guess who will win that contest.

If Mueller had any ethical sense, he would have declined to serve. But not only did he take the job, he proceeded to staff his operation with lawyers who have represented Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation as well as the IT specialist who set up Clinton’s private email server and who destroyed her Blackberrys with a hammer. And, of course, Mueller also hired the now discredited Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Again, weren’t there any qualified, conflict free professionals available?

Add to all of this what we now know about Rosenstein’s participation in obtaining the FISA warrants to illegally spy on Trump’s campaign and administration (the subject of an upcoming blog post) and the non-existent chance of Trump surviving an interrogation by Team Mueller uncharged becomes crystal clear. It would be an ambush, pure and simple.

The President should follow Dowd’s lead and refuse to answer Team Mueller’s questions. With every passing day, as ever more disclosures of the corruption in Comey’s FBI and Obama’s DOJ emerge, the time and tide are running out on Mueller. Soon to be released will be the Inspector General’s report on the fake investigation and Comey’s utterly corrupt exoneration of Hillary Clinton for compromising national security. With that Mueller’s position will become even more beleaguered.

If Trump follows Dowd’s advice and declines to appear voluntarily for questioning, Mueller would have to resort to issuing a subpoena to compel the President to appear before the grand jury. And that would afford Trump’s lawyers the perfect opportunity to raise Team Mueller’s glaring conflicts of interest and the corruption of Comey’s FBI and Obama’s Justice Department in one hyuuuge motion to quash.

If that happens, you should buy popcorn futures and sit back for one terrific show.