Ex-Trump Aide Sam Nunberg Says He Will Refuse Grand Jury Order. Unless He Doesn’t.

And so it went with Mr. Nunberg, a protégé of the self-described dirty trickster Roger J. Stone Jr., who has been a focus of aspects of the various investigations into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.

Part of the subpoena document, which Mr. Nunberg provided to The New York Times, is dated Feb. 27 and makes no mention of requiring him to appear before the grand jury. It calls only for him to preserve documents from Nov. 1, 2015, through the present related to several people connected to the Trump campaign. They include President Trump; the departing White House communications director, Hope Hicks; the former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist; Mr. Trump’s longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller; the former Trump Organization lawyer Michael D. Cohen; and Mr. Stone, a longtime confidant of Mr. Trump’s.

“They have requested a ridiculous amount of documents,” Mr. Nunberg said. “Should I spend 30 hours producing these? I don’t know what they have. They may very well have something on the president. But they are unfairly targeting Roger Stone.”

The subpoena also demands any documents related to Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who was secretly surveilled by the Justice Department as part of the Russia investigation, as well as Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, and his deputy, Rick Gates. Mr. Manafort has been indicted on a string of money laundering and fraud charges, and Mr. Gates recently pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s investigators.

The list of people about whom Mr. Mueller is seeking information from Mr. Nunberg raises questions about his target, as does the time frame. Mr. Nunberg was fired by Mr. Trump during the summer of 2015 and thus was gone from the campaign in November. And he and Mr. Lewandowski are known to be combatants.

Still, Mr. Nunberg — whose mentor, Mr. Stone, goes by the motto that all press is good press — spent hours on Monday engaged in a media tour with The Times, The Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC, describing his plans to flout the subpoena and professing his lack of concern about what could happen to him.

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“I was fired within six weeks” of the campaign’s start, Mr. Nunberg told The Times, despite having “saved” Mr. Trump during a fight with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that summer after Mr. Trump’s remark that Mr. McCain was not a war hero because he was captured in Vietnam. Mr. McCain was shot down during the war and imprisoned for more than five years in Hanoi, refusing early release even after being beaten repeatedly.

Mr. Nunberg added that the president often sounded “like a moron, but this whole thing is a witch hunt.”

Mr. Nunberg said he anticipated his lawyer, Patrick J. Brackley, would fire him for speaking publicly. Mr. Brackley did not immediately respond to an email asking whether that was the case.

Mr. Nunberg could avoid appearing before the grand jury if his lawyer sent prosecutors a letter asserting his Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself. If that does not happen, Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors could ask a judge for a bench warrant for Mr. Nunberg’s arrest.

Mr. Nunberg has spoken with the Senate Intelligence Committee in its own investigation into Russian election meddling, according to a person familiar with the matter. He has not spoken with the House Intelligence Committee, according to three of its members. Its own examination of Moscow interference has languished amid partisan infighting.

Mr. Stone, asked for comment, said he was not surprised that his information was being sought.

“I was part of the Trump campaign, have been the president’s friend and adviser for decades, and would expect that Mueller’s team would ask for any documents or emails sent or written by me,” Mr. Stone said in a text message. “But let me reiterate, I have no knowledge or involvement in Russian collusion or any other inappropriate act.”

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North Korean leader holds first direct talks with delegation from rival South

By Anna Fifield  | Washington Post

TOKYO — Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hosted a South Korean presidential delegation for “openhearted” talks over dinner in Pyongyang on Monday, according to the North’s state media, the latest surprising development in a burst of diplomacy that both Koreas hope will stave off threats from the United States.

The 34-year-old North Korean leader has not met another head of state — including the presidents of historical allies China and Russia — since he took over the totalitarian country after his father’s death at the end of 2011.

But now, possibly under pressure from U.S.-led sanctions and concerned about President Donald Trump’s unorthodox style, Kim Jong Un is suddenly willing to take the olive branches that South Korea has been offering him.

“This shows how desperate he is,” said Choi Jin-wook, who was head of the South’s Korea Institute for National Unification until last year. “His plan to become a nuclear state has almost become successful, but so what? He can’t eat nukes. So now he’s knocking on South Korea’s door.”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday sent a 10-member delegation to Pyongyang to begin preparations for an inter-Korean summit, which would be the first in 10 years and the first since Kim Jong Un took over.

This follows a frenzy of visits linked to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last month, during which Kim Jong Un sent his younger sister to Seoul to hand-deliver the summit invitation to Moon.

To prepare for the summit, which Seoul hopes will happen quickly, Moon dispatched a delegation led by Chung Eui-yong, his national security adviser, and including Suh Hoon, chief of the South’s National Intelligence Service.

“I plan to hold in-depth discussions on various ways to continue talks between not only the South and the North, but also the North and the United States and the international community,” Chung told reporters before departing Seoul on Monday afternoon.

The delegation met with officials in the afternoon before having dinner with Kim, his wife Ri Sol Ju and his sister, Kim Yo Jong.

The South Korean Blue House did not release contents of the meeting but said it was “reasonable, educated speculation” to think they discussed denuclearization.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency said only that the two sides reached a “satisfactory” agreement.

Chung, who speaks fluent English and regularly talks to his American counterpart, H.R. McMaster, was specifically chosen to lead the delegation because he would be viewed in Washington as a credible and trustworthy messenger, according to people close to the Blue House.

After returning to Seoul on Tuesday and briefing the president, Chung will immediately travel to Washington to tell Trump administration officials about the meeting.

Some other officials in Moon’s inner circle, notably his chief of staff, are viewed with suspicion in Washington because of previous activities considered sympathetic to North Korea and hostile to the United States.

During his meetings in Pyongyang, Chung will almost certainly bring up the issue of denuclearization, the outside world’s most pressing concern, especially since North Korea last year exploded what was widely agreed to be a hydrogen bomb.

But it is far from clear whether North Korea will be willing to discuss this issue even in the vaguest terms. Pyongyang has previously said that its weapons are aimed only at the United States and are not a matter of inter-Korean concern.

But the international sanctions imposed are now approaching an economic blockade, and experts say they are beginning to hurt North Korea.

China said it was “a good thing” that the South Korean delegation had traveled to Pyongyang.

“We look forward to a positive outcome of the meeting,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Monday during a news briefing, according to the Associated Press. “We hope all sides will bear in mind the larger picture of peninsular peace and stability.”

South Korea’s Moon has been increasingly seeking ways to engage with North Korea, diplomatically or economically, as talk in Washington about military options has grown louder. He has repeatedly said that the United States must not strike North Korea without the approval of South Korea, where half the population lives within Northern artillery range.

Trump, for his part, has vacillated between threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea and seeming open to dialogue.

Trump said Saturday that he “won’t rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un.”

“Now we’re talking. They, by the way, called up a couple of days ago; they said, ‘We would like to talk,’ ” Trump said during a speech at the Gridiron dinner. “And I said, ‘So would we, but you have to denuke.’ ”

It was not immediately clear what Trump was talking about when he said that the North Koreans had called.

Vice President Mike Pence was set to meet the North Korean delegation at the opening of the Olympics, but the North Korean officials pulled out at the last minute, the White House said.

The White House has also said there were no meetings surrounding the closing ceremonies, when the National Security Council official responsible for Korea, Allison Hooker, traveled to South Korea with Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser.

North Korea sent one of its top officials on American affairs to the event, and his schedule in South Korea during the three-day visit remains unknown.”The dialogue we desire is the one designed to discuss and resolve the issues of mutual concern on an equal footing between states.”

While Trump was making his remarks Saturday, North Korea said it would only talk to the United States if it were on an “equal footing,” without any preconditions. The United States has previously insisted that North Korea commit to denuclearization before sitting down to talks.

“It is the consistent and principled position of the DPRK to resolve issues in a diplomatic and peaceful way through dialogue and negotiation,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Saturday, using the abbreviation for the country’s official name.

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