Mueller’s obstruction evidence against Trump
The long-awaited report from special counsel Robert Mueller details abundant evidence against President Donald Trump – finding 10 episodes of suspicious behavior – but ultimately concluding it was not Mueller’s role to determine whether the commander in chief broke the law.
‘‘The evidence we obtained about the president’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment,’’ Mueller’s team said in the report submitted to Congress yesterday. ‘‘At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.’’
Since Mueller ended his investigation last month, a central question facing the Justice Department has been why Mueller’s team did not reach a conclusion about whether the president obstructed justice. The issue was complicated, the report said, by two key factors – that, under department practice, a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, and that a president has a great deal of constitutional authority to give orders to other government employees.
Trump submitted written answers to investigators. The special counsel’s office considered them ‘‘inadequate’’ but did not press for an interview with him because doing so would cause a ‘‘substantial delay,’’ the report says.
It says investigators felt they had ‘‘sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the president’s testimony.’’
While the report marked the end of Mueller’s work, his investigation has already produced criminal charges against 34 people, including six former Trump associates and advisers. Multiple related investigations involving the president are ongoing.
Trump’s legal team called Mueller’s report ‘‘a total victory’’ for the president. ‘‘The report underscores what we have argued from the very beginning – there was no collusion – there was no obstruction,’’ they said.
In their statement, Trump’s lawyers also attacked former leaders at the FBI for opening ‘‘a biased, political attack against the president – turning one of our foundational legal standards on its head.’’
However, if Mueller’s report was a victory for the president, it was an ugly one. Investigators paint an unflattering portrait of a president who believes the Justice Department and the FBI should answer to his orders, even when it comes to criminal investigations.
During a meeting in which the president complained about then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, Trump insisted that past attorneys general had been more obedient to their presidents, referring to the Kennedy brothers and the Obama administration.
‘‘You’re telling me that Bobby and Jack didn’t talk about investigations? Or Obama didn’t tell Eric Holder who to investigate?’’ Trump told senior White House staffers Stephen Bannon and Donald McGahn, according to the report. ‘‘Bannon recalled that the president was as mad as Bannon had ever seen him and that he screamed at McGahn about how weak Sessions was,’’ the report says.
Repeatedly, it appears Trump may have been saved from more serious legal jeopardy because his own staffers refused to carry out orders they thought were problematic or potentially illegal.
For instance, during the early days of the administration, when the president was facing growing questions concerning thennational security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversation about sanctions with a Russian ambassador, the president ordered another aide, KT McFarland, to write an email saying the president did not direct those conversations. She decided not to do so, unsure if that was true and fearing it might be improper.
‘‘Some evidence suggests that the president knew about the existence and content of Flynn’s calls when they occurred, but the evidence is inconclusive and could not be relied upon to establish the President’s knowledge,’’ the report says.
The report also recounts a remarkable moment in May 2017 when Sessions told Trump that Mueller had just been appointed special counsel. Trump slumped back in his chair, according to notes from Jody Hunt, Sessions’ then-chief of staff. ‘‘Oh my God, this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency,’’ Trump said. Trump further laid into Sessions for his recusal, saying Sessions had let him down.
‘‘Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency,’’ Trump said, according to Hunt’s notes. ‘‘It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.’’
The special counsel’s report on possible co-ordination between the Trump campaign and Russians to interfere in the 2016 election is detailed with only modest redactions – painting a starkly different picture for Trump than Attorney General William Barr has offered, and revealing new details about interactions between Russians and Trump associates.
Mueller’s team wrote that although their investigation ‘‘did not establish that the Trump Campaign co-ordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,’’ that assertion was informed by the fact that co-ordination requires more than two parties ‘‘taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.’’
And Mueller made abundantly clear: Russia wanted to help the Trump campaign, and the Trump campaign was willing to take it.
‘‘Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or co-ordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,’’ Mueller’s team wrote.
The report detailed a timeline of contacts between the Trump campaign and those with Russian ties – much of it already known, but some of it new.
For example, Mueller’s team asserted that in August 2016, Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the FBI has assessed as having ties to Russian intelligence, met with Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, ‘‘to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel’s Office was a ‘backdoor’ way for Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine.’’
The special counsel wrote that both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump’s ‘‘assent to success (were he elected President).’’
‘‘They also discussed the status of the Trump Campaign and Manafort’s strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states,’’ the special counsel wrote. ‘‘Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik, and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.’’
Mueller’s report suggests his obstruction of justice investigation was heavily informed by an opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opinion that says a sitting president cannot be indicted – a conclusion Mueller’s team accepted.
‘‘And apart from OLC’s constitutional view, we recognised that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting president would place burdens on the president’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct,’’ Mueller’s team wrote. – Washington Post