President Donald Trump was furious.
He had just learned that special counsel Robert Mueller III’s investigation went beyond Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign and into the White House – and that Trump himself was now under scrutiny for his actions in office. The next day, he attempted to oust Mueller, only to be thwarted by his White House counsel, according to the special counsel’s report.
So Trump turned to the one person he could long count on to do his bidding: Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, described by senior White House advisers to investigators as a Trump “devotee.” In a private Oval Office meeting, the President dictated a message he wanted delivered to then-Attorney-General Jeff Sessions: that he needed to give a speech announcing he was limiting the scope of the investigation.
Trump’s efforts to enlist Lewandowski as a back channel to try to curtail the probe, detailed in 10 pages of Mueller’s 448-page report, provides a new window into how far the President went in trying to hold back the special counsel.
The episode, which discomfited even some of Trump’s most loyal advisers, was read by some legal observers as one of the clearest cases laid out in Mueller’s report of potential obstruction of justice by the President. In unequivocal terms, the report states that there was “substantial evidence” that Trump hoped his actions would derail Mueller’s investigation and prevent further scrutiny of his campaign and his own conduct.
But senior Justice Department officials took a more skeptical view, which informed Attorney-General William Barr’s later conclusion that Trump could not be charged with obstructing justice, according to people familiar with the thinking.
The differing interpretations might help explain how Barr ultimately came to his decision, despite the detailed evidence in Mueller’s report.
“All the Attorney-General was deciding was whether this was a prosecutable offense, and we don’t bring criminal charges at the department unless we believe we can prove them beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury,” a senior Justice Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The White House declined to comment.
The President has claimed that Mueller’s investigation resulted in his “complete and total exoneration.”
“Despite the fact that the Mueller Report was ‘composed’ by Trump Haters and Angry Democrats, who had unlimited funds and human resources, the end result was No Collusion, No Obstruction. Amazing!” he tweeted Thursday.
Through a combination of missed opportunities and personal hesitation, Lewandowski never executed Trump’s demand. But the roughly month-long period in the summer of 2017 depicted in Mueller’s report details repeated and escalating efforts by the President to stymie the Russia probe – laying out evidence that former prosecutors said meets the elements required in an obstruction-of-justice charge.
“This is a very significant episode,” said Barbara McQuade, who served as a US attorney in Michigan during the Obama administration. “The question is, are all of the elements of obstruction of justice met? Was there an act, was there a sufficient nexus and was there a corrupt intent? Here, the answer is yes, yes and yes.”
She added: “There are several episodes where I am confident that if this were not the President of the United States, charges would absolutely be recommended. And this is one of them.”
Former independent counsel Robert Ray, however, said he believes the President’s conduct in office must be assessed with some nuance – not just to see whether it meets the technical case for obstruction.
“It’s the President … You’ve got to have a certain amount of latitude for the President to roam and manoeuvre in the execution of his constitutional duties,” Ray said.
He said he was not arguing that the President is above the law but that prosecutors have discretion about whether to charge a crime and always look at more than merely whether the elements of a crime are present.