Tag: Trump potential obstruction of justice

Nadler says Mueller will not testify next week

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) said Friday that special counsel Robert Mueller will not be testifying before his panel next week.

Nadler told reporters that the committee is still negotiating over his testimony with the Justice Department and Mueller but expects the special counsel to appear.

“It won’t be next week. We’re negotiating now,” Nadler said. “We’re talking with him and the Justice Department.”

View the complete May 10 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

The 10 Trump actions Mueller spotlighted for potential obstruction

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election details 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice by President Trump that prosecutors examined. Mueller did so even as he declined to make a traditional judgment about whether Trump committed a crime.

“The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment,” the report stated. “At the same time, 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, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

Attorney General William P. Barr and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, examined the obstruction evidence laid out by Mueller’s team and concluded that it did not rise to the level of obstruction of justice — a controversial decision, given that Trump recently appointed Barr and Barr had criticized Mueller’s obstruction probe.

View the complete April 18 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Redacted Mueller Report

If you have an interest in reading the full redacted Mueller report, we have a link to a copy below.  (Where it’s a large PDF file, it takes a bit of time to load into preview mode.)  You’ll be able to read it in your browser window or download a copy to read offline:

https://app.luminpdf.com/viewer/CNFEcohiARvepzMtk

If you’d prefer to immediately download the file, here’s another link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C-id3YJBYAvSC5IoyIk6Du_S6Y6F3ZAU/view?usp=sharing

Five things to watch for in restricted Mueller report

Attorney General William Barr is expected to release a restricted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report sometime next week, leaving Washington on edge with questions about its contents.

Barr already laid out what he described as Mueller’s bottom-line conclusions in a four-page letter, saying the special counsel did not find evidence to establish that members of the Trump campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.

Barr also said Mueller did not come to a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice. However, the attorney general reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to accuse Trump of obstruction.

View the complete April 13 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Whitaker ‘Did Not Deny’ Discussing Cohen Case With Trump, a Top Democrat Says

WASHINGTON — The former acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker “did not deny” in a private meeting with House lawmakers on Wednesday that he had spoken to President Trump about an investigation in New York that had ensnared the president and his business, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said.

Speaking after the meeting, the chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, presented Mr. Whitaker’s comments as being at odds with his public testimony last month before the Judiciary Committee. In that hearing, Mr. Whitaker generally would not say if he had communicated with the president about the case, which led to charges against Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer.

Mr. Whitaker at the time denied a CNN report that Mr. Trump had yelled at him about the case after Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance charges that implicated Mr. Trump. A report by The New York Times after the February hearing recounted another call between the two men about the case in which Mr. Trump asked about the possibility of putting the United States attorney whom the president had appointed in charge of it.

View the complete March 13 article by Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.

White House rejects Dem request to interview ex-Trump aide

The White House on Friday rejected a Democratic congressional request to interview a former White House lawyer about hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money payments made by President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone told House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in a letter obtained by The Hill that the White House has been “cooperative and responsive” to the panel’s requests for documents.

But Cipollone said that because the Oversight panel wants to interview Trump’s former deputy assistant and deputy counsel Stefan Passantino about things he discussed or advised during his White House tenure, the request needs to be sent to Cipollone’s office — not directly to Passantino.

View the complete March 8 article by Scott Wong and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Majority say Trump fired Sessions because he wanted loyal attorney general to oversee Mueller probe

A majority of registered voters say they believe President Trump fired Jeff Sessions because he wanted an attorney general who was loyal to him to oversee special counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe into Russian election interference, according to a new American Barometer survey.

The poll, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 66 percent of respondents said Trump fired Sessions in order to get a loyal attorney general to oversee the probe, while 34 percent said Sessions was fired because he was not an effective attorney general.

The survey also revealed a partisan divide, with 61 percent of Republicans saying Sessions was fired because he was not an effective attorney general and 87 percent of Democrats saying he was fired because Trump wanted a loyal attorney general to oversee the investigation.

View the complete November 12 article on The Hill website here.

The gall of Trump’s potential obstruction of justice

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website March 8, 2018:

President Trump and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

We don’t yet know whether special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will accuse President Trump of obstruction of justice. But if he does, we may look back upon Wednesday as a case-in-point as to why.

The New York Times is reporting on yet the latest episode that could play into the obstruction portion of the Russia investigation: Trump’s conversations with two aides, White House counsel Donald McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus, about their discussions with Mueller’s team.

Neither contact is considered a smoking gun or illegal in and of itself, but each could play into the obstruction case that has built over time and could speak to Trump’s desire to influence the direction of the investigation. The McGahn situation might take the cake when it comes to Trump’s oft-demonstrated blend of chutzpah and unwieldiness. Continue reading “The gall of Trump’s potential obstruction of justice”

A bold new legal defense for Trump: Presidents cannot obstruct justice

The following article by Sari Horwitz and Philip Rucker was posted on the Washington Post website December 4, 2017:

John Dowd, one of President Trump’s lawyers in the Russia investigation, is photographed exiting a federal court in New York in 2011. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters)

The brazen assertion Monday by one of President Trump’s lawyers that a president cannot be found guilty of obstruction of justice signaled a controversial defense strategy in the wide-ranging Russia probe, as Trump’s political advisers are increasingly concerned about the legal advice he is receiving.

Trump tweeted over the weekend that he knew then-national security adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador before firing him in February — and before FBI Director James B. Comey said Trump asked him to be lenient while investigating Flynn. Experts said the president’s admission increased his legal exposure to obstruction-of-justice charges, one of the core crimes under investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Continue reading “A bold new legal defense for Trump: Presidents cannot obstruct justice”