Mueller whacks Trump with evidence of obstruction
Far from the “complete and total exoneration” the president has declared in recent weeks, the report depicts a president who made repeated moves to thwart the investigation into his campaign and presidency, possibly because Trump was trying to hide other, potentially criminal behavior — although Mueller found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy to help Russia influence the 2016 election.
The report, which riveted Washington Thursday, recounts Trump’s repeated attempts to fire Mueller and his anger when those efforts became public. It also details an effort to pressure staffers to send an email exonerating him and notes that the president had more knowledge of an aide’s potentially criminal behavior than he may have let on.
One implication of the report is that Trump may have escaped a finding that he obstructed justice only because his top aides refused to carry out his most dramatic orders. Indeed, Mueller’s team describes several of Trump’s actions as satisfying all the legal elements of obstruction.
Perhaps most notably, Mueller’s prosecutors said that while Trump seemed confident the FBI would not uncover a conspiracy between his campaign and Moscow, he was still concerned about what else they might find. Among his anxieties were the ongoing attempts during the 2016 campaign to seek business in Russia, including an attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
“The evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns,” the report states.
.. In recent weeks, Attorney General William Barr has emphasized Trump’s intent as he explained his decision to not pursue an obstruction case against the president, even though Mueller chose not to make such a definitive conclusion.
“It is important to bear in mind the context,” Barr said at a Thursday morning press conference. “There was relentless speculation in the news media about the president’s personal culpability,” Barr added. “Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion.”
.. Mueller’s team seemed far less definitive about Trump’s mindset regarding potential obstruction.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment,” the report says in a 182-page section dedicated to obstruction.
“Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” it continues.
.. The passage is particularly notable as it contains the full context of a line Barr used in an initial March 24 letter he released summarizing the principal conclusions of Mueller’s report. Barr chose only to include a portion of the final sentence, frustrating Democrats, some former DOJ officials and even some on Mueller’s team, who felt that the selective editing narrowly presented the special counsel’s findings.
Barr also proactively announced in his March letter that he would not bring an obstruction case against the president, further irritating Democrats.
Mueller’s report leaves open the possibility that Trump could at least in theory face prosecution for criminal acts after he leaves office. Mueller’s prosecutors decided, therefore, that a criminal investigation of the president was appropriate.
However, Mueller’s team said making a decision about whether crimes were committed would have gone too far. Long-standing DOJ legal guidance dating to Watergate says a sitting president can’t be indicted.
In a lengthy analysis, the report explains that claiming the president obstructed justice without the ability to charge him would taint his presidency and damage his ability to govern — leaving him with no legal recourse to clear his name or protections normally afforded to criminal defendants.
“Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought,” the report says.
The obstruction section is one of the less-redacted sections in a report that includes 954 total redactions, mostly centered on withholding secret grand jury material and information that could harm ongoing investigations. In total, 40 percent of pages have at least one redaction, although only 14 percent of the obstruction pages have blacked out passages.
.. The obstruction section unveils new details about a much-scrutinzed discussion Trump had with former FBI Director James Comey. According to Comey, Trump leaned on him to drop an investigation into one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn regarding an untruthful interview with the FBI.
The Mueller report says when that conversation occurred, Justice Department officials had already told White House counsel Don McGahn that Flynn’s conduct could be considered unlawful, and that McGahn related that information to the president.
.. “McGahn continued trying [on] behalf of the President to avert Sessions’ recusal by speaking to Sessions’s personal counsel, Sessions’s chief of staff and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and by contacting Sessions himself,” Mueller’s team wrote.
.. Trump’s ire for McGahn is apparent in several of the document’s passages. One section recounts that after The New York Times reported that Trump had requested McGahn fire Mueller, the president few into a rage, calling McGahn a “lying bastard” in a conversation with White House staff secretary Rob Porter. Trump demanded that McGahn write a letter denying the firing request, but McGahn declined.
.. The report also said Trump once dressed down McGahn for his note-taking practice. “What about these notes? Why do you take notes? I never had a lawyer who takes notes,” the president declared, according to McGahn.
McGahn said he replied that he keeps notes because he’s a “real lawyer,” the report says.
.. According to Mueller’s report, Trump asked his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to get Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland, to “draft an internal email that would confirm that the President did not direct Flynn to call the Russian Ambassador about sanctions.”
“MacFarland told Priebus she did not know whether the President had directed Flynn to talk to [the Russian ambassador] about sanctions, and she declined to say yes or no to the request.”
.. McFarland and another official considered the request “sufficiently irregular” to document it and raise concerns about it, the report says.
Mueller’s team concluded that some of Trump’s suspect actions seemed to have multiple motivations, which made it difficult to conclude whether the president had corrupt intent when he took certain steps, like firing Comey in May 2017.
“Evidence indicates that the President was angered by both the existence of the Russia investigation and the public reporting that he was under investigation, which he knew was not true based on Comey’s representations,” the report says. “Other evidence indicates that the President was concerned about the impact of the Russia investigation on his ability to govern.”
.. After White House officials asked the Justice Department to issue a statement saying it was Rosenstein’s idea to fire Comey, the deputy attorney general told aides that he wouldn’t put out a “false story,” according to the report.
Trump then called Rosenstein directly and urged him to hold a press conference about his role in the firing. “Rosenstein responded that this was not a good idea, because if the press asked him, he would tell the truth that Comey’s firing was not his idea,” the report says, citing accounts from Rosenstein and another DOJ lawyer.