Sources say Trump tried to stop AG from recusing

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: Stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election, two people with knowledge of the episode told The New York Times.

Public pressure was building for Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, the two people said.

The Associated Press later released its own report that Trump had directed McGahn to stop Sessions from recusing, citing one person familiar with the matter. Citing two others, the AP also reported that McGahn had carried out Trump’s order.

McGahn was unsuccessful in his attempt to persuade Sessions not to recuse himself, the Times reported, and the president had an angry outburst in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement offi-

cial to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric Holder had for Barack Obama, according to the report.

Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer, who had been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.

The lobbying of Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has learned about as he investigates whether Trump obstructed the FBI’s Russia inquiry, the Times has learned. The events occurred during a two-month period — from when Sessions recused himself March 2 until the appointment of Mueller in May — when Trump believed he was losing control over the investigation.

In announcing his recusal, Sessions said at the time that he should not oversee an investigation into a campaign for which he was an active and vocal supporter, though the recusal also followed the revelation that he had had two previously undisclosed interactions during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Soon before his announcement, McGahn spoke to Sessions by phone and urged him against recusing himself from the investigation.

During the conversation, people familiar with the matter told the AP, McGahn argued to Sessions that there was no reason or basis at that time for him to recuse. One person said McGahn also told him that recusal would do nothing to resolve concerns over whether Sessions had given a misleading answer at his confirmation hearing weeks earlier when he said he had not had any contacts with Russians.

Sessions ultimately declined the urging, and McGahn ultimately accepted the conclusion of officials who believed that Sessions should recuse, the AP reported.

Sessions’ recusal left Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in charge of the Russia investigation. But once Trump fired FBI Director James Comey two months later, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, to run the investigation and to report to him.

Four people, including Trump’s former campaign chairman and national security adviser, have been charged so far in the Russia investigation.

The Sessions recusal has been a sore spot for Trump for months, with the president publicly deriding the decision and lamenting his selection of the former Alabama senator as his attorney general.

In a July interview with the Times, Trump said, “Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.”

In another episode Mueller has learned about, Trump described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to Comey, the FBI director at the time, but that White House aides stopped him from sending, the Times has learned.

Mueller has also substantiated claims that Comey made in a series of memos describing troubling interactions with the president before he was fired in May.

The special counsel has received handwritten notes from Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Trump talked to Priebus about how he had called Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. The president’s determination to fire Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.

The Times has also learned that four days before Comey was fired, one of Sessions’ aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the FBI director. It was not clear whether Mueller’s investigators knew about this incident.

The accounts of the episodes are based on documents reviewed by the Times, as well as interviews with White House officials and others briefed on the investigation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Trump’s lawyers have said the president has fully cooperated with the investigation, and they have expressed confidence that the inquiry will soon be coming to a close. They said they believed the president would be exonerated and that they hoped to have that conclusion made public.

Legal experts said that of the two primary issues Mueller appears to be investigating — whether Trump obstructed justice while in office and whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — there is a larger body of public evidence tying the president to a possible crime of obstruction.

But the experts are divided about whether the accumulated evidence is enough for Mueller to bring an obstruction case. They said it could be difficult to prove that the president, who has broad authority over the executive branch, including the hiring and firing of officials, had corrupt intentions when he took actions like ousting the FBI director. Some experts said the case would be stronger if there was evidence that the president had told witnesses to lie under oath.