The White House told Senate Republicans on Friday it is open to reducing its infrastructure proposal down to $1.7 trillion in the hopes of securing a bipartisan deal, but GOP lawmakers signaled they are still disinclined to support a package carrying that price tag.

The exchange occurred during a private meeting earlier in the day between top aides to the Biden administration and about a half-dozen Republicans led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). The new offer, described afterward by White House press secretary Jen Psaki, appears to mark a decrease from the total $2.2 trillion Biden proposed earlier this spring.

“This proposal exhibits a willingness to come down in size, giving on some areas that are important to the president,” Psaki said.

But Republicans did not appear immediately swayed by the White House’s new spending target, according to two people familiar with the meeting who requested anonymity to describe a private conversation. One of the sources said the decrease is not as steep as it appears, reflecting efforts by the Biden administration to just shift spending to other legislative packages.

In fact, depending on what those Trump Organization family members have already said — and to whom — it may already be too late. Importantly, because the Trump Organization case is now criminal, individual employees and officers of that organization can face criminal charges for their specific roles in any corporate wrongdoing. Donald Jr. and Eric still serve as executive vice presidents of the organization, a title that Ivanka Trump previously also held. And, of course, before his presidency, their infamous father was at the helm of the organization.

During my FBI career, including my time leading one of the largest white-collar crime branches in the field, and later, as a corporate security executive, I saw corporate employees mistakenly think that their companies' attorneys represented them, too, in cases of corporate malfeasance. Big mistake. A company attorney represents the company, not the individual employees or executives. It's quite likely that Trump Organization attorneys have already asked — and Trump family members have already answered — questions about what each of them did or did not do that might be the focus of New York's investigation.

In fact, there's a whole body of case law on what it means when an employee answers questions posed by a company's attorneys or investigators to try to get to the bottom of who did what. There's even a kind of "corporate Miranda warning" that ethical companies give their employees who are asked to provide statements when a company is trying to determine whether it's in trouble.

These advisements — called "Upjohn warnings" — developed out of a Supreme Court case involving a pharmaceutical company accused of paying bribes overseas. The Upjohn case resulted in a kind of good news/bad news conclusion. The good news for corporations was that the court found that attorney-client privilege applied to communications between company attorneys and employees.

Greenwald’s ex-colleagues at the Intercept say that he has lied about their work. Worse, they say, his attacks have helped stir an angry and dangerous reaction in right-wing circles, leading to harassment of some of the publication’s journalists — the very thing Greenwald accused the Intercept of inciting. In the wake of Greenwald’s criticism, the author of the Gab story was threatened and “doxed,” meaning his personal information was exposed online. It prompted the publication to assign a security detail to him and his wife.

Staffers suggest Greenwald, 54, is motivated by more than just psychic payback for his acrimonious divorce from the Intercept seven months ago. They say he is cynically fomenting controversy to attract subscribers to his online newsletter.

“I feel like Glenn has lost his moral compass and his grip on reality,” Betsy Reed, the Intercept’s editor in chief, said in an interview. “He’s done a good job of torching his journalistic reputation. He’s a huge bully.” (The Intercept has stood by its reporting).

Greenwald denies any motivation other than fairness. “They’ve been irresponsible,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Brazil. “They should be called on it.”

During an appearance last week on Laura Ingraham’s Fox program, Greenwald claimed that the Intercept had made the videographers targets of protesters by “dragging their faces into the light.” The story’s author, Robert Mackey, responded on Twitter that this was a curious charge to make, given that the videographers themselves appear semi-regularly on Fox and other conservative outlets to promote their work — and indeed preceded Greenwald on Ingraham’s show.