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DELEGITIMIZING THE INVESTIGATION

The letter briefly shifts in tone to an attack on law enforcement institutions and the legitimacy of the investigation. The president and his allies routinely use such language in the public relations arena. But his lawyers’ use of it in a private missive to Mr. Mueller is striking: a reminder to the special counsel that he will face more than legal pushback if he subpoenas the president or accuses him of wrongdoing.

.. MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING

This is why defense lawyers have been so confident in saying that Mr. Mueller is not investigating Mr. Trump’s personal finances or his family’s real estate dealings.

 

.. LIMITS OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE

The president’s lawyers are arguing that because they have turned over so many documents and made other witnesses available for depositions, Mr. Mueller has already obtained the same information he would get from an interview with Mr. Trump. But if a subpoena fight does arise, Mr. Mueller will almost certainly argue that only by questioning Mr. Trump directly about what he was thinking can investigators determine his intent.

.. FULL COOPERATION MODE

The White House has been saying for months that it is in “full cooperation mode” with the special counsel. This is the payoff for that strategy. The president’s lawyers are signaling here that, if subpoenaed, Mr. Trump would argue that the many documents the White House has turned over and the hours of interviews with staff members have made his testimony unnecessary.

.. AN OUTDATED UNDERSTANDING OF THE LAW

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are making a legalistic argument that he could not have violated an obstruction statute because F.B.I. investigations are not considered to be covered by it. But a different obstruction statute is relevant here, legal experts say. Enacted in 2002, it criminalizes the corrupt impeding of proceedings even if they have not yet started — like the potential grand jury investigation an F.B.I. case can prompt. The president’s lawyers do not mention this statute, whose existence appears to render several of their arguments beside the point.

.. FLYNN’S INVESTIGATION

We learn here for the first time that Mr. Flynn told top White House officials that the F.B.I. investigation into him was nearly complete. Mr. Trump’s lawyers go on to say this is important because the president could not have tried to obstruct an investigation he believed was over.

.. DON’T THANK ME

Mr. Trump’s lawyers say he should get credit for his handling of Mr. Flynn’s case because he ultimately fired him.

.. MORE SHOTS AT COMEY

Mr. Comey’s contemporaneous memos paint an unflattering portrait of Mr. Trump and are key evidence in the case. Here, Mr. Trump’s lawyers assail their credibility, saying perhaps Mr. Comey misunderstood the president’s comments.

.. A HIGHER LOYALTY

Mr. Comey relishes his reputation as a fiercely independent lawman. But in this instance, he might have benefited from sharing his concerns about Mr. Trump with someone at the Justice Department.

.. WHAT ABOUT A BAD REASON?

For the most part, executive branch officials serve at the pleasure of the president, who can fire them at his discretion. But the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can create limits, upholding statutes that forbid the firing of certain officials without good cause. The novel legal question, which this statement evades, is whether statutes outlawing obstruction of justice implicitly constitute such a limit on when a president can fire an F.B.I. director. If so, it would be unlawful to fire an F.B.I. director for a corrupt reason — even though it would still be legal to fire him or her for a good reason or even for no particular reason..

.. EVERYTHING IS UNPRECEDENTED

No president has ever faced criminal charges about anything. Under Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, the Justice Department opined that presidents are immune from prosecution while in office, and neither was prosecuted afterward because Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon and Mr. Clinton struck a deal with prosecutors on his last day in office. This is one of many ways that the Trump era is potentially taking the country into uncharted waters.

.. A BROAD VIEW OF POWER

This is the most sweeping legal claim in the letter: Even if Mr. Trump did order an investigation shut down and fire the F.B.I. director as part of a cover-up of wrongdoing, his lawyers say he still did not violate the law because he was exercising powers the Constitution has granted exclusively to him. Under this view, it would be unconstitutional to apply obstruction-of-justice statutes enacted by Congress to limit how a president chooses to use his power to supervise the executive branch.

.. ATTACKING COMEY’S CREDIBILITY

The president’s lawyers devote much of the letter to attacking Mr. Comey as a potential witness, suggesting here that his memo documenting his conversation with Mr. Trump about Mr. Flynn may not exist. Three months after this letter was written, the memo was made public. They also appear to suggest that Mr. Comey may have written the memo after Mr. Trump fired him, rather than documenting the conversation immediately after it happened, as Mr. Comey has said he did; there is no evidence no support that insinuation.

 

THE LESTER HOLT INTERVIEW

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that this excerpt from the interview has been misunderstood because of his meandering, stream-of-consciousness speaking style, and that the president got diverted but eventually came back to what he meant: not that he fired Mr. Comey because of the Russia investigation, but that he did so despite knowing that it would probably prolong the investigation.

.. PRESSURE’S OFF

Mr. Trump’s lawyers do not concede that he said this — though the Times’ account was based on an official document summarizing the meeting — but they say it does not matter even if he did. Most interesting is the reference to a confidential memo, suggesting a more expansive response could not be made in this letter without compromising classified information.

.. TRUMP’S CENTRAL ROLE IN A MISLEADING STATEMENT

This is the first time that representatives of Mr. Trump concede that he dictated a “short but accurate” statement issued by his son to The New York Times about a meeting in June 2016 the younger Mr. Trump had with a Russian lawyer who an intermediary claimed had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump’s advisers have tried to muddy this point, suggesting several people were involved, so the clarity of the sentence is striking. The response about the statement from Mr. Trump’s lawyers also quickly shifts to Mr. Trump’s son, saying he soon after made a “full public disclosure” about how the meeting was arranged.

.. LYING TO THE MEDIA IS NOT A CRIME

It is not a crime for a politician to lie to The Times and, by extension, to the public. But there are at least two reasons that Mr. Trump’s role in drafting a misleading statement may be of interest. First, it could be evidence of his mind-set when he undertook other actions that may have impeded the investigation. Secondly, a Watergate-era precedent exists for Congress to consider lies to the public to be obstruction of justice in the looser context of impeachment proceedings. An article of impeachment that lawmakers approved against Nixon before he resigned included “making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing” there had been no misconduct.

.. HAPPY TO HELP

The president’s lawyers say they will answer questions on the president’s behalf, a strategy that allows Mr. Trump the ability to say he has offered answers to every question — without the risk of actually having to sit for an interview. While prosecutors often take information (known as a proffer) from defense lawyers, most experienced investigators would say there is no substitute for having someone in the witness chair.

.. OUTDATED THEORIES

This footnote cites theories already debunked by the time this letter was sent. For example, the footnote cites a claim made on Jan. 23 by Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, that the F.B.I. had a “secret society” devoted to bringing Mr. Trump down, as an excerpt from a F.B.I. text message suggested. But by Jan. 25 — four days before Mr. Trump’s legal team sent the letter — it had become clear that phrase was a joke, and Mr. Johnson walked back his alarmist assertion. Similarly, the letter claims that the F.B.I. opened the investigation based on a politically funded dossier of alleged Trump-Russia ties. But The Times had reported in December that the F.B.I. instead opened the investigation based on information from an Australian diplomat.