Trump reportedly tried to fire Mueller in June
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered the firing last June of Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, according to four people told of the matter, but ultimately backed down after the White House counsel threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive.
The West Wing confrontation marks the first time Trump is known to have tried to fire the special counsel. Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.
During the first wave of news media reports that Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation, two of the people said.
First, he claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mueller, the FBI director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s sonin-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mueller had been interviewed to re-
turn as the FBI director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.
After receiving the president’s order to fire Mueller, the White House counsel, Don McGahn, refused to ask the Justice Department to dismiss the special counsel, saying he would quit instead, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
According to them, McGahn disagreed with the president’s case and told senior White House officials that firing Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Trump’s presidency. McGahn also told White House officials that Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. The president then backed off.
Ty Cobb, the president’s lawyer who manages the White House’s relationship with Mueller’s office, said in a statement, “We decline to comment out of respect for the Office of the Special Counsel and its process.”
Around the time Trump wanted to fire Mueller, the president’s legal team, led then by his longtime personal lawyer in New York, Marc Kasowitz, was taking an adversarial approach to the Russia investigation. The president’s lawyers were digging into potential conflict-of-interest concerns regarding Mueller and his team, according to current and former White House officials, and news media reports revealed that several of Mueller’s prosecutors had donated to Democrats.
Another option that Trump considered in discussions with his advisers was dismissing the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and elevating the department’s No. 3 official, Rachel Brand, to oversee Mueller. Rosenstein has overseen the investigation since March, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself.
Trump has significantly ratcheted back his criticisms of Mueller since he hired Cobb in July. Since then, the White House has operated on the premise that the quickest way to clear the cloud of suspicion was to cooperate with Mueller, not to fight him.
TRANSPARENCY TOUTED
Meanwhile, more than 20 White House officials have voluntarily given interviews to special counsel investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to a document released Thursday by John Dowd, one of Trump’s attorneys.
The White House has also turned over 20,000 pages of documents to Mueller, including hundreds of documents related to former FBI Director James Comey and former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, according to the one-page memo.
Mueller’s investigators have indicated to the White House that they are interested in questioning Trump about the ousters of both Comey and Flynn.
Dowd said he created the document to “summarize this extraordinary cooperation,” arguing that the administration has provided “unprecedented” transparency to the multiple Russia probes. He called it “the most transparent response in history by a president” to a special counsel.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment.
The president’s attorneys sought on Thursday to stress how much material has been shared with investigators. Trump’s presidential campaign turned over 1.4 million pages to the special counsel, and 17 campaign staff members — along with 11 individuals
affiliated with the campaign — gave interviews to Mueller’s team or congressional committees, according to Dowd’s memo.
For his part, Trump said Wednesday that he was “looking forward” to being interviewed by Mueller’s team, a session that is expected to occur in the coming weeks.
TRANSCRIPTS PROMISED
Also Thursday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said he plans to release transcripts of interviews with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., and others who participated in a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
Grassley, who is also chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday that the committee would disclose “all witness interviews that we have done related to that meeting,” making them available to the public “for everyone to see.” The committee’s interviews, which were conducted privately, are complete, he added.
Grassley said the transcripts must be redacted first. It was not immediately clear when that process will be complete. Two of the five transcripts still require legal vetting as well, he said. When asked whether public testimony from these witnesses has been ruled out now, the senator said, “I wouldn’t say anything’s off table, but [it’s] not likely.”
Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, Calif., said Thursday that she was “delighted” by Grassley’s intentions.
The committee spoke with Trump Jr. in September and, in the past several months, has also interviewed other participants in the Trump Tower meeting, including music promoter Rob Goldstone, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, U.S.-based Russian real estate
employee Ike Kaveladze and Anatoli Samochornov, the translator for Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who answered the committee’s questions in writing.
A lawyer for Trump Jr., Alan Futerfas, declined to comment Thursday. Attorneys for Goldstone and Akhmetshin did not immediately respond to messages, and Veselnitskaya could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for Kaveladze, Scott Balber, said his client has cooperated fully with all government inquiries, adding, “We are pleased that his testimony will be made publicly available.”
The panel never spoke with Kushner, Trump’s sonin-law, or with his former campaign manager Paul Manafort. Both also attended the Trump Tower meeting.
Grassley said Thursday that the panel’s “chances of getting a voluntary interview with Mr. Kushner has been shot,” and blamed Feinstein for having “spooked” potential witnesses when she unilaterally released the transcript of the panel’s interview with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Simpson and his company were involved in producing a dossier detailing alleged ties between Trump and the Kremlin.
Kushner’s legal team didn’t formally decline an appearance with the Senate Judiciary Committee, a person familiar with the matter said. But team members asked for guidance on when lawmakers are allowed to disclose information and whether the committee had received the transcript of Kushner’s interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Grassley’s team has blamed Feinstein for costing the committee an interview with Manafort in July, just before FBI agents raided his apartment in Alexandria, Va. Feinstein denies the insinuation and has faulted Grassley for failing to subpoena Manafort’s testimony.
On Thursday, Grassley said he hoped that Feinstein, who also sits on the Intelligence Committee, could broker a deal for Grassley to be able to view the transcript of that committee’s interview with Kushner, as she did with Manafort. The Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has thus far resisted Grassley’s entreaties.
FBI OFFICIALS’ TEXTING
Separately, the Department of Justice inspector general said he has recovered missing text messages from two senior FBI officials who investigated both Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes critical of the president.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office “succeeded in using forensic tools” to recover messages between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page during a key five-month period ending the day Mueller was appointed to investigate possible coordination between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign. The missing messages have sparked a political firestorm in recent days as GOP leaders and the president himself have raised questions about how the FBI could have failed to retain them.
Horowitz’s letter did not indicate how many messages were recovered and said his effort to locate more was “ongoing.” He said he would provide copies to the Justice Department and would have no objection if leaders there turned them over to Congress if they felt it was appropriate.
The letter was sent to Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.
Horowitz has been investigating Strzok and Page’s conduct as part of his office’s investigation into the handling of the probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Both Page and Strzok worked on the Clinton case and the Russia probe.
The Washington Post reported in December that Strzok was removed from the Trump probe back in July after internal investigators discovered he and Page, who were romantically involved, exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Clinton texts during investigations of both political figures. Page had left the Mueller team two weeks before Strzok for what officials said were unrelated reasons. for this article was by Michael S. and
Information contributed Schmidt Karoun of Demirjian, Maggie Rosalind Haberman The New York Times; by S. Helderman, Zapotosky, Tom Devlin Hamburger, Barrett Matt and Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post; by Steven T. Dennis, Laura Litvan and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News; and by Chad Day, Mary Clare Jalonick, Eric Tucker and Sadie Gurman of The Associated Press.
Trump has significantly ratcheted back his criticisms of Mueller since he hired Cobb in July. Since then, the White House has operated on the premise that the quickest way to clear the cloud of suspicion was to cooperate with Mueller, not to fight him.