Trump’s actions raise political stakes
President’s actions during Russia probe have drawn scrutiny for possible obstruction of justice and likely raise the stakes for midterm elections.
WASHINGTON — At least a half-dozen times, President Donald Trump by his actions has invited scrutiny for obstruction of justice in the Russia probe, and now comes a report that last year he ordered the firing of the very man investigating him.
That man, special counsel Robert Mueller, ultimately will decide if the president’s words and deeds make a case for a criminal indictment or an impeachment referral to Congress.
Trump has increased his political jeopardy, giving new arguments to impeachment advocates. That seems likely to raise the stakes for this year’s midterm elections, in which control of Congress will be up for grabs.
House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the Senate’s Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have made clear that they do not want the midterm elections to be a referendum on impeachment — not least for fear of galvanizing Republican voters.
But the issue could prove hard to ignore. With each development further incriminating the president, the pressure on Democratic leaders from the party’s anti-Trump left builds.
On Friday, Pelosi said in a statement that Trump’s reported threat to Mueller was “part of a grave pattern of attempts by the President to undermine and obstruct the ongoing investigations into Russia’s interference in our elections.”
The president has denied or disputed many of the episodes in question.
On Friday, Trump dismissed the latest story as “fake news” as he strode through the halls of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, seemingly unfazed by the new storm blowing from across the Atlantic.
The New York Times reported late Thursday that in June, Trump ordered that Mueller be fired, relenting only after his White House counsel, Don. McGahn, threatened to quit rather than comply.
The president’s order came at a time, seven months ago, when news reports were disclosing that Mueller had expanded his probe to include whether Trump, as president, had tried to obstruct the investigation into Russia’s election meddling and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
Throughout the month, Trump fired off tweets calling Mueller’s investigation a “Witch Hunt!” Several of his associates began saying privately — and in some cases publicly — that Trump wanted to get rid of Mueller.
The possible case against Trump for obstruction had started building the previous month, on May 9, when the president fired FBI Director James Comey and volunteered days later in an NBC interview that he had acted with “the Russia thing” in mind.
Before long, the fired Comey would add potential evidence against Trump by authorizing friends to release contemporaneous memos he’d written of his discussions with Trump before he was fired — memos he gave to Mueller’s team.
In the memos and in public testimony to Congress, Comey described a private dinner in January at which Trump demanded loyalty, even as Comey was heading the FBI’s Russia investigation, and a White House meeting in February when the president suggested that Comey back off a probe into the conduct of Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Other episodes that could be viewed as efforts to impede or influence the investigation include Trump’s repeated comments and tweets humiliating Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe last March.
The only person who can fire Mueller is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has been overseeing the special counsel’s investigation because of Sessions’ recusal.
Rosenstein has testified he’s seen no valid reason to remove Mueller, and he’d resist an inappropriate order to do so.
Two bipartisan proposals to insulate the special counsel, which would provide a judicial review of any effort to oust Mueller, have languished in Congress since August.
Even before reports of Trump’s aborted order to fire Mueller, many including Republicans have said the anecdotal evidence of Trump’s potential obstruction has been compelling.
If Mueller recommended charges, bringing them against a president could prove difficult, according to some legal experts.
“The president, in my view, cannot be charged with obstruction of justice for simply exercising his constitutional power, regardless of what his motives may be,” said Alan Dershowitz, a constitutional and criminal law scholar at Harvard Law School.
He recalled that President George H.W. Bush pardoned officials from his administration implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, actions that a special prosecutor called a cover-up.
Yet, Dershowitz said, “Nobody dreamed of prosecuting President Bush for obstruction of justice.”
Richard J. Davis, who was an assistant special prosecutor during the Watergate investigation of President Richard Nixon, has a different take.
“The fact that he has the power to do something doesn’t mean that he can’t be abusing that power to obstruct an investigation,” Davis said. “You can’t say, ‘I’m the president, and therefore what I do doesn’t matter.’ ”