The day before, then-acting attorney general Sally Yates first alerted White House Counsel Donald McGahn that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied about his transition contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak
.. This was no casual get-to-know-you social occasion. It occurred just as Trump was learning that Flynn was in enormous jeopardy.
.. he understood Trump’s expression of “hope” as a clear direction to drop the case. If this request was so benign, why did Trump seemingly feel uncomfortable making it in the presence of witnesses?
.. Even on the question of obstruction alone, he would want to question multiple additional witnesses about Trump’s dealings with Comey and the Flynn case/larger Russia inquiry, including
- Chief of Staff Reince Priebus,
- senior adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner,
- McGahn,
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions and
- Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.
- Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and
- National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers
may have stiff-armed senators’ questions about Trump’s reported efforts to have them intervene on the Russia matter; they won’t be able to easily evade Mueller.
Could the Russia Investigation Reveal Trump’s Tax Returns?
If special prosecutor Robert Mueller suspects they contain evidence of a crime, the most sought-after documents in Washington might just be unearthed.
Trump—who is the first president in 40 years to refuse to make his tax returns public, despite once promising to do so— would have almost no way of stopping him. In fact, the prosecutors said, the president and his lawyers would not necessarily even know that Mueller had obtained them.
.. Notably, this does not necessarily mean that the public would ever see the returns.
.. Trump’s two adult sons have both been quoted as saying that Russian investments represent a lopsided share of their revenues
.. Rosenstein is, nominally, Mueller’s supervisor, which means Rosenstein could try to overturn any significant decision made by Mueller, including a decision to seek the tax returns.
Trump’s tweets ‘a gold mine’ for Mueller probe
The president’s running public commentary gives investigators real-time insight into the intent behind his actions – and could create problems for him or his aides.
.. the @realdonaldtrump account gives investigators a detailed timeline of Trump’s thoughts and opinions – including where they might differ from official accounts – and can also be used to establish intent, which can be critical in a criminal investigation.
.. The president’s warning last month to the fired FBI director James Comey, that he’d “better hope that there are no tapes” of their conversations, “could well be interpreted as an effort to intimidate a witness,” Forde added.
.. Legal experts say the president’s recent statements, including his admission to NBC News’ Lester Holt that he had the Russia investigation in mind before firing Comey, as well as his comment reported by the New York Times that Comey was a publicity-seeking “nut job” helps them paint a poignant picture of the president’s intentions.
“You could use those tweets to show the president was angry and frustrated by this Russia investigation, that he was furious that it was ongoing, that he didn’t think it was legitimate, that he therefore fired the FBI director to thwart it,” Zeidenberg said. “You could support that whole theory almost entirely on tweets and statements of Trump.”
.. The degree of attention Trump has given to the Russia probe on Twitter, Zeidenberg said, would make it challenging for the president’s attorneys to argue he wasn’t being serious on his social media account.
What Donald Trump Needs to Know About Bob Mueller and Jim Comey
The two men who could bring down the president have been preparing their entire lives for this moment.
.. Cheney’s office had told Comey in no uncertain terms that if the program wasn’t OK’d, Americans would die—and their blood would be on Comey’s hands.
.. Comey realized that Mueller wouldn’t make it before the White House officials, so he asked for help: Don’t let them remove me, he asked Mueller.
.. Comey knew that Card would have Secret Service protection with him, and he was worried about being forcibly ejected by agents from Ashcroft’s hospital room. Ashcroft, weakened from gallbladder problems, was in no condition to sign off on STELLAR WIND—he’d legally turned the reins over to Comey while he was incapacitated—but, Comey feared, if the White House could isolate Ashcroft, who knew what it would do? Comey thought fast: Ashcroft had his own FBI security detail, and so he asked Mueller to call ahead and tell them not to allow the attorney general to be left alone.
.. the single most extraordinary moment of the tumultuous Bush years: The FBI director ordering his agents to resist the Secret Service if they tried to remove the deputy attorney general from the attorney general’s bedside.
.. what it says about the motivations and the moral compass of the two men now at the heart of a new Washington showdown—should deeply worry the Trump White House.
.. Donald Trump, as it turns out, has stumbled into taking on two experienced Washington players on their home turf
.. companies and organizations recruit to lead investigations when they need to tell shareholders or the public that they’ve hired the most seasoned and respected person they can find
.. he finds himself facing not just one esteemed former FBI director but two: the first a wronged martyr for the bureau, and the second a legendary investigator without a hint of politics
.. Comey told me he’d enlisted Mueller’s help because of his reputation for integrity and also because of the political power and righteousness inherent in the nonpartisan position Mueller held. “I knew that no one cared about losing a deputy attorney general,” he said, “but no president could weather losing an FBI director.”
.. “Your mind comes to be dominated by the horrific consequences of low-probability events.”
.. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t Comey’s arguments, legal or political, that stopped the Bush White House in its tracks on STELLAR WIND.
It was Bob Mueller.
.. as more than a dozen FBI and Justice Department officials readied letters of resignation—a potential political catastrophe amid that spring’s presidential reelection campaign that would have made the Saturday Night Massacre look like a minor D.C. tremor—Comey met privately with President Bush
.. ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’” They spoke at length, before Comey played the trump card, “I think you should know that Director Mueller is going to resign today.”
.. “The rule of law, civil liberties and civil rights—these are not our burdens. They are what makes all of us safer and stronger.” If the president didn’t change course, Mueller had no choice, he said. He hadn’t sworn to serve George W. Bush. He had sworn to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
.. “I was afraid that if the story got out of what Jim was going to say, the Bush administration would figure out a way to prevent him from testifying,” Bharara recalled later. “We needed to preserve the element of surprise.”
.. he is not one who sprawls and grasps for every thread, as is also evident from his NFL investigation, in which he stayed clear of larger questions about the the league’s handling of domestic violence generally. He doesn’t see it as his job to answer policy questions—just to execute the law and the investigation.
.. “We live in dangerous times, but we are not the first generation of Americans to face threats to our security,”
.. Mueller overall sees little gray in the world; he’s a black-or-white guy, right or wrong.
.. Mueller burned through chiefs of staff almost every year. “He drives at such speed that he can burn up people around him,” Comey told me of Mueller. “Some people burn people up because they’re assholes. Bob burns them up by sheer exertion.”