Inside the Russian probe’s secretive nerve centre
Witnesses deal with teams of investigators: ‘They kind of cycle in and out of the room’
Awhite sedan whisked a man into the loading dock of a glass and concrete building in a drab office district in southwest Washington. Security guards quickly waved the vehicle inside, then pushed a button that closed the garage door and shielded the guest’s arrival from public view.
With his stealth morning arrival last week, White House Counsel Donald McGahn became the latest in a string of high-level witnesses to enter the secretive nerve centre of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Twenty-hours later, Mueller and his team emerged into public view to rattle Washington with the dramatic announcement that former national security adviser Michael Flynn would plead guilty to lying to the FBI.
The ensnaring of Flynn, the second former aide to President Donald Trump to cooperate with the inquiry, serves as the latest indication that Mueller’s operation is drilling deeper into Trump’s inner circle.
In the past two months, Mueller and his deputies have received private debriefs from two dozen current and former Trump advisers, each of whom has made the trek to the special counsel’s secure office suite.
Once inside, most witnesses are seated in a windowless conference room where two- and three-person teams of FBI agents and prosecutors rotate in and out, pressing them for answers.
Among the topics that have been of keen interest to investigators: how foreign government officials and their emissaries contacted Trump officials, as well as the actions and interplay of Flynn and Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law. Often listening in is the special counsel himself, a sphinxlike presence who sits quietly along the wall for portions of key interviews.
This picture of Mueller’s operation — drawn from descriptions of witnesses, lawyers and others briefed on the interviews — provides a rare look inside the high-stakes investigation that could implicate Trump’s circle and determine the future of his presidency.
Mueller’s group has inquired whether Flynn recommended specific foreign meetings to senior aides, includ- ing Kushner. Investigators were particularly interested in how certain foreign officials got on Kushner’s calendar and the discussions that Flynn and Kushner had about those encounters.
During the transition, Kushner and Flynn met the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. At the early December meeting, Kushner suggested establishing a secure communications line between Trump officials and the Kremlin at a Russian diplomatic facility, according to US officials who reviewed intelligence reports describing Kislyak’s account.
Kushner has said that Kislyak sought the secure line as a way for Russian generals to communicate to the incoming administration about US policy on Syria.
Trump’s son-in-law has also been identified by people familiar with his role as the “very senior member” of the transition team who directed Flynn in December to reach out to Kislyak and lobby him about a UN resolution on Israeli settlements, according to new court filings.
The volume of questions about Kushner in their interviews surprised some witnesses. “I remember specifically being asked about Jared a number of times,” said one witness. Another witness said agents and prosecutors repeatedly asked him about Trump’s decision-making during the May weekend he decided to fire FBI Director James Comey. Prosecutors inquired whether Kushner had pushed the President to jettison Comey.
People who have gone before Mueller’s team describe polite but detailed and intense grillings that at times have lasted all day and involved more than a dozen investigators.
Mueller has attended some interviews, introducing himself to witnesses and then sitting along the wall. Sometimes he is joined by his deputy, longtime friend and law partner James Quarles, a former Watergate prosecutor.
Invesigators bring large binders filled with emails and documents into the interview room. One witness described the ricochet of questions that followed each time an agent passed them a copy of an email they had been copied on: “Do you remember this email? How does the White House work? How does the transition work? Who was taking the lead on foreign contacts? How did that work? Who was involved in this decision? Who was there that weekend?”
One witness said: “They kind of cycle in and out of the room”. One contingent of investigators is focused on whether Trump tried to obstruct justice and head off the investigation into Russian meddling by firing Comey in May. Prosecutors Brandon Van Grack and Jeannie Rhee have been involved in matters related to Flynn. Yet another team is led by the former head of the Justice Department’s fraud prosecutions, Andrew Weissman, and foreign bribery expert Greg Andres. Those investigators queried lobbyists about their interactions with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign adviser Rick Gates.
People familiar with the Mueller team said they convey a sense of calm that is unsettling. “These guys are confident, impressive, pretty friendly — joking a little, even,” one lawyer said. When prosecutors strike that kind of tone, he said, defence lawyers tend to think: “Uh oh, my guy is in a heap of trouble.”