President Trump “finally submitted a set of written responses to Robert Mueller, signaling that he was done for good with the special counsel’s questions. But Mueller is far from done with him,” Politico reports.

“The special counsel still wants to question the president over his actions while in the White House — Tuesday’s answers only covered Russian hacking during the 2016 election. It’s a fight that could result in a historic subpoena and eventual Supreme Court ruling, pulling a defiant Trump into a legal squabble that could set groundbreaking precedent for presidential investigations for years to come. Depending on how the battle plays out, House Democrats may even try and pounce and launch impeachment proceedings.”

“Things could get explosive fast. Next comes the perilous round of negotiations between Trump’s lawyers and Mueller’s prosecutors covering topics like Trump’s intentions when firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. That line of questioning — which Trump says he shouldn’t have to answer — is tied to Mueller’s ongoing obstruction of justice investigation.”

“Attorneys for President Trump said that they turned over his answers to a series of questions from special counsel Robert Mueller about the president’s knowledge of the Russian government’s efforts to assist his 2016 White House bid,” the Washington Post reports.

“The inquiries address only a portion of the questions that Mueller has sought to pose to Trump for nearly a year, when he first requested an interview with president.”

Los Angeles Times: “There are concrete indications that special counsel Robert Mueller is now about the business of laying down the last big pieces of the puzzle of Russian intervention in the 2016 election.”

“Mueller already has done the difficult digging on the Russian side of the equation, bringing detailed indictments in February 2018 for a wide-ranging Russian trolling operation related to the campaign, as well as the July 2016 hacking of Democratic Party emails. Now he’s looking to tie those allegations to people close to the Trump campaign.”

“The upshot may be allegations of ‘collusion,’ of the sort the president has long denied. The actual charges are likely to be one of three criminal conspiracies: violating federal election laws, violating computer laws, or soliciting or receiving something of value from a foreign government. Charges, in other words, that not even the most ardent Trump die-hard could trivialize. They bring with them the possibility that Mueller might opt to name President Trump himself as an unindicted co-conspirator.”

A new CBS News poll finds that 52% of Americans think Congress should pass legislation to protect the special counsel in charge of the Russia investigation from being fired, including three out of four Democrats and most independents.

Sixty-seven percent of Republicans, however, disagree.

President Trump said that he would deliver his written responses to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller next week, The Hill reports.

Said Trump: “They’re all done.”

President Trump said “he hasn’t submitted his answers yet and emphasized that he wrote them, not his lawyers,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Trump: “You always have to be careful answering questions for people who have bad intentions.”

President Trump resumed his Twitter attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, calling its “a total mess.”

Said Trump: “The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want.”

In another tweet: “They won’t even look at all of the bad acts and crimes on the other side.”

“An alleged scheme to pay off women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been referred to the FBI for further investigation,” The Atlantic reports.

“The special counsel’s attention to this scheme—which was brought to the office by a woman claiming she herself had been offered money to make up sexual harassment claims against Mueller—and its decision to release a rare statement about it to reporters indicates the seriousness with which the office is taking the purported scheme to discredit Mueller in the middle of an ongoing investigation.”

“The special counsel’s office confirmed that the scheme was brought to its attention by several journalists who were told about it by a woman alleging that she herself had been offered roughly $20,000 by a GOP activist named Jack Burkman ‘to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller.'”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders would not offer any assurances that President Trump will allow the special counsel investigation to continue without delay if Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein exits the Justice Department, telling ABC News that she doesn’t want to get ahead of the process.

Jeffrey Toobin: “Firing Mueller—who has been investigating Trump and his campaign and Administration for a year and a half—would be the very definition of a high crime and misdemeanor, as impeachable offenses are defined in the Constitution. But would the Republicans who control Congress see it that way?”

“Put another way, the real question is whether there is any political will among the Republicans who run the legislative branch of government to check Trump’s power. One of the signal features of the Trump Presidency has been the abject surrender of the Republican Party, especially in Congress, to all of Trump’s demands. Most congressional Republicans have made dutiful statements urging the President not to fire Mueller, but will they really take any action if Trump actually does it? Their history suggests that they will not—and they may soon have the chance to test that hypothesis. Mueller’s fate has never looked more precarious than it does today, and he would be foolish to think that the Republicans in Congress would do anything to protect him.”