White House on edge as Mueller quietly pursues Russia probe
with additional economic sanctions, but the Senate had yet to take up the bill.
The Senate last month passed sanctions legislation that targeted only Russia and Iran. Congressional aides said there may be resistance among Senate Republicans to adding the North Korea penalties, but it remained unclear whether those concerns would further stall the legislation. The aides were not authorised to speak publicly and requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbours and actively sought to undermine American interests,” McCarthy and Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement. “The bill the House will vote on next week will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions.”
The House and Senate negotiators addressed concerns voiced by American oil and natural gas companies that sanctions specific to Russia’s energy sector could backfire on them to Moscow’s benefit. The bill raises the threshold for when US firms would be prohibited from being part of energy projects that also included Russian businesses.
For two months, Robert Mueller — the lanky, 72-year-old independent prosecutor investigating the Russia scandal — has worked in virtual silence in a nondescript government office building in downtown Washington.
But even without saying a word, the former FBI director and no-nonsense prosecutor has deeply unnerved the occupants of the White House just eight blocks away, especially President Donald Trump, over where his probe is going.
Mueller has built a team of more than a dozen tough-as-nails investigators, including one expert in flipping mafia witnesses, a money laundering specialist who chased down a corrupt billionaire, and one of the country’s most experienced Supreme Court litigators.
Since May, they have been quietly interviewing witnesses and collecting documents to establish whether there are links between top aides from Trump’s campaign, members of his family, and possibly the president himself and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
After dismissing the probe for months as “ridiculous” and “fake news,” Trump laid bare his concerns last week, lashing out at the Justice Department, from his hand-picked Attorney General Jeff Sessions on down the line, over the probe.
He took special aim at Mueller, making clear he intends to try to undercut and discredit the man who could bring down his presidency — and possibly eventually remove him.
In an interview with The New York Times, Trump complained that one day after he interviewed Mueller to replace fired FBI chief James Comey, Mueller instead went and took the job of investigating the Russia scandal.
“The next day, he is appointed special counsel. I said, what is this all about? Talk about conflicts?” Trump said.
Any prosecutor taking on the presidency has to shoulder an immense amount of political pressure, said Randall Samborn, an attorney.
But if anyone should be able to handle that, Samborn said, it would be Mueller.
Mueller, a former Marine wounded in fighting in Vietnam, is also a veteran of tough prosecutions, including taking on former Panama president Manuel Noriega and mafia don John Gotti.
He took the helm of the FBI one week before the September 11, 2001 attacks. And in a nowlegendary defence of rule of law, he and Comey faced down president George W. Bush in 2004 over a secret, illegal domestic surveillance programme. Risking being fired, they forced Bush to adjust his plans.
It’s the kind of fortitude that has garnered Mueller praise from both Democrats and Republicans for years.