Trump can’t obstruct justice, his lawyers argue to Mueller
Power is too broad, they say in bid to block a subpoena.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’ s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confifidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.
In ab rash assertion of presidential power, the 20- page letter — sent to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and obtained by The New York Times — contends that the president cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to ,“if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon .”
Trump’s lawyers fear that if he answers questions, either voluntarily or in front of a grand jury, he risks exposing himself to accusations of lying to investigators, a potential crime or impeachable offense.
Trump’s broad interpretation of executive authority is novel and is likely to be tested if a court battle ensues over whether he could be ordered to answer questions. It is unclear how that fifight, should the case reach that point, would play out. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.
“We don’t knowwhat the law is on the intersection between the obstruction statutes and the president exercising his constitutional power to supervise an investigation in the Justice Department ,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who oversawthe Justice Department’s Offiffice of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration. “It’s an open question.”
Hand-delivered to the special counsel’s office in January and written by two of the president’s lawyers at the time, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, the letter offers a rare glimpse into one side of the high- stakes negotiations over a presidential interview.
The letter also lays out a series of claims that foreshadow a potential subpoena fight that could unfold in the months leading into November’s midterm elections.
“We are reminded of our duty to protect the president and his offiffice,” the lawyers wrote, making their case that Mueller has the information he needs from tens of thousands of pages of documents they provided and testimony by other witnesses, obviating the necessity for a presidential interview.
Mueller has told the president’s lawyers that he needs to talk to their client to deter- mine whether he had criminal intent to obstruct the investigation into his associates’ possible links to Russia’s election interference. If Trump refuses to be questioned, Mueller will have to weigh their arguments while deciding whether to press ahead with a historic grand jury subpoena.
Mueller had raised the prospect of subpoenaing Trump to Dowd in March. Emmet Flood, the White House lawyer for the special counsel investigation, is preparing for that possibility, according to the president’s lead lawyer in the case, Rudy Giuliani.
The attempt to dissuade Mueller fromseeking a grand jury subpoena is one of two front son which Trump’ s lawyers are fifighting. In recent weeks, they have also begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and in part to pre- empt a potentially damaging special counsel report that could prompt impeachment proceedings.
Trumpcomplained Saturday on Twitter that the disclosure of the letter was a damaging leak to the news media and asked whether the “expensive Witch Hunt Hoax” would ever end.
On both fronts, they have attacked the credibility of a key witness in the inquiry, the fifired FBI director James Comey; complained about what they see as investigative failures; and contested the interpretation of significant facts.
Giuliani said in an interview that Trump is telling the truth but that investigators “have a false version of it, we believe, so you’re trapped.” And the stakes are too high to risk being interviewed under those circumstances, he added: “That becomes not just a prosecutable offense, but an impeachable off ff ff ff ff ff en se .”