Report: Trump struggled to keep a grip on Russia probe
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: Stop 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.
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 F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger 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 official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.
Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.
Legal experts said that of the two primary issues special counsel Robert S. 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.
Regardless of whether Mueller believes there is enough evidence to make a case against the president, Trump’s belief that his attorney general should protect him provides an important window into how he governs. Presidents have had close relationships with their attorneys general, but Trump’s obsession with loyalty is particularly unusual, especially given the Justice Department’s investigation into him and his associates.
The lobbying of Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes that Mueller has learned about during his investigation. The events occurred during a two-month period — from when Sessions recused himself in March until the appointment of Mueller in May — when Trump believed he was losing control over the investigation.
Among the other episodes, Trump described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to the FBI director at the time, James B. Comey, but that White House aides stopped him from sending. 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 New York 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.
Mueller has also been examining a false statement the president dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting Trump campaign officials had with Russians. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it constituted obstruction of justice.