The tragicomic farce of the Trump administration added an episode yesterday with former campaign aide Sam Nunberg’s declaration that he wouldn’t cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller. He later decided maybe he would cooperate after all.

Perhaps he was influenced by some personal advice from Susan McDougal, interviewed by the Washington Post about her own interaction with Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr during the Whitewater investigation in 1996.

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She refused to testify before a Grand Jury (she said she had nothing to offer and Starr hoped to pressure her into lying about Bill Clinton) and spent 18 months behind bars in often gruesome conditions.

McDougal said in an interview Monday that she would not do anything differently — though Nunberg should know that being incarcerated is no joke. She said she was moved from facility to facility and spent a good deal of time in isolation.

“It is not an easy thing to do,” McDougal said. “You don’t just go sit and work out in the afternoons.”

McDougal questioned why Nunberg was appearing on television suggesting he knew things that might be of interest to Mueller. “Why would he do that and then not cooperate?” she said. “The difference is, I didn’t know anything.”

McDougal now works at UAMS.

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