WASHINGTON(TIP): President Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday, August 8, submitted a counteroffer to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s proposal for the terms of a possible interview with the president, the latest turn in the protracted negotiations over a sit-down stretching back to January, according to a report published in Wall Street Journal.

The counteroffer largely sticks to the terms the president’s legal team outlined last month, a person familiar with the matter said: The president’s lawyers would be open to questions about collusion with Russia but wished to limit inquires related to obstruction of justice.

Rudy Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers, said in an interview that the team’s proposal was “a little bit different than what we recommended before, but not terribly.”

He said the legal team had “left open” the possibility to investigators that the president would answer a question on obstruction of justice “if they can show us an obstruction question that they need an answer to, where they haven’t gotten an answer.”

Mr. Giuliani said that in the special counsel’s last offer, Mr. Mueller agreed to decrease the number of questions posed to the president but hasn’t agreed to the Trump team’s request to curb obstruction of justice inquiries.

A spokesman for Mr. Mueller, who has not publicly commented on the negotiations, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Mueller is investigating whether Trump associates colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, and whether Mr. Trump sought to obstruct justice by firing Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey in May 2017, while the FBI’s Russia probe was under way. Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion and obstruction, and Moscow has denied election interference.

The special counsel’s team of investigators and prosecutors has netted guilty pleas from several Trump campaign associates and indictments of a dozen Russian intelligence officials on hacking charges, among other prosecutions. Mr. Trump’s one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort is currently being tried in Virginia on bank and tax fraud charges.

The special counsel this year outlined for the president’s legal team more than 40 questions he planned to ask in a possible interview with Mr. Trump. The questions focused largely on the president’s decision to fire Mr. Comey and his public criticisms of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other top law-enforcement officials.

Mr. Giuliani has said the reasons Mr. Trump has given in public for firing the former FBI director are “more than sufficient” and that as president, he had the power to fire any member of his administration.

The president’s legal team has been negotiating the terms of a possible interview with Mr. Mueller for more than eight months. Mr. Trump has said he is eager to sit down with Mr. Mueller. It is unclear how long the two sides will allow the negotiations to continue.

Mr. Giuliani said Wednesday that the legal team wants to see the Mueller investigation “over with” by Sept. 1, ahead of the November midterm elections. He said Mr. Trump’s lawyers would make a final decision in the coming weeks whether or not the president would sit for an interview. The president’s lawyers have previously offered timelines in which they would decide on an interview, only to see those end dates pass by.

“It really depends on how badly they want it,” Mr. Giuliani said of an interview. “This is about the last couple of days that you can really putz around.”