OBSTRUCTING THE OBSTRUCTER
THE (UNREDACTED) MUELLER REPORT DOSSIER
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WHAT TO KNOW
What Happened? On Thursday, the
Department of Justice released a 448-page, lightly redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report investigating Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. As
previewed by Attorney General William Barr 3 1/2 weeks ago, Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin but did not reach a firm legal conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.
The report reveals that Trump tried repeatedly through a variety of means to curtail the investigation — but that his subordinates ignored or resisted his wishes.
Much of the information in the report had already been revealed publicly. We’d heard through media leaks, for example, about White House counsel Don McGahn refusing and threatening to resign after Trump asked him to have then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fire Mueller. Through congressional testimony, we knew Trump requested FBI Director James Comey’s “loyalty” before he was canned. And then, of course, there are Trump’s own tweets and interviews, including his floating the idea of a pardon for former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. So what’s new?
Particularly on the “collusion” side, much of the new information — or lack thereof — favors the president. For example, Mueller found no evidence that Trump had advance knowledge of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in which a Russian lawyer who offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton sat down with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort. He also found no evidence that Trump directed a change in the Republican Party platform at the 2016 convention on arming Ukraine to make it more favorable to Russia. Instead, a campaign aide just wanted it to reflect what Trump had said publicly.
But in the 10 potential incidents of obstruction, there are notable new wrinkles about how Trump scrambled to fight the investigations. After Sessions recused himself from overseeing the investigation, the White House counsel’s office notes indicate that the president should avoid his attorney general: “No comms/Serious concerns about obstruction.” But Mueller documents repeated attempts by Trump to get Sessions to “unrecuse,” for which he would be a “hero.” “I’m not going to do anything or direct you to do anything,” Trump told his attorney general at one point. “I just want to be treated fairly.”
Trump often raged against Mueller’s probe, saying privately that it was “the end of his presidency.”
For example, in July 2017, he directed former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to tell Sessions to say publicly that the Mueller investigation was “very unfair” and limit it to protecting against future election interference. Lewandowski didn’t want to act on the request, so he asked White House deputy chief of staff
Rick Dearborn (a former Sessions aide) to do so. Dearborn declined.
“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,” Mueller’s team wrote. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT
High Crimes, or No Crimes? The fresh evidence of Trump trying to obstruct the investigation gave new fodder to calls to impeach the president, even if Mueller did not recommend charging Trump with a crime. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Thursday impeachment is “one possibility,” but he’s starting by issuing a subpoena for the full, unredacted report. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been cool to the idea of impeaching Trump unless she can get bipartisan support, which does not appear to be forthcoming. But Congress did get an implicit green light from Mueller: “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the president’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” the report states.
Setting the Barr. The attorney general was able to prespin the Mueller report before its release, both in his four-page letter to Congress and a news conference Thursday morning in which Barr repeatedly said the report found no collusion and defended the president’s state of mind early in the presidency when much of the potential obstruction was going on. "As the special counsel's report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show
