In the Mueller report, 11 “key events” were examined on potential obstruction of justice. (Condensed)
Source: factcheck.org6·
1· Trump campaign’s response to reports about Russian support
WikiLeaks posted emailson July 22, 2016, that had been hacked from the Democratic National Committee. Trump, at the time, dismissed as “crazy” the suggestion that those emails had been hacked by Russia in an effort to help his campaign. At a press conferenceon July 27, 2016, Trump said of the suggestion, “It is so far fetched, it’s ridiculous. Honestly, I wish I had that power. I’d love to have that power.”
Testimony given by Rick Gates— the deputy campaign manager who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to investigators — says that shortly after the Wikileaks release, he was in the car on the way to an airport with Trump when Trump took a call. After he got off the phone, the report says, “Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming.”
Roger Stone, an informal Trump adviser, communicated with members of the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks’ planned releases, according to his Jan. 24, 2019, indictment.
In the summer of 2016, the report says, the Trump campaign planned “a communications strategy based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks.”
2· President’s conduct concerning the investigation of Michael Flynn
Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty in late 2017 to making false statements to the FBI about conversations he had with a Russian ambassador during the transition regarding U.S. sanctions leveled by the Obama administration.
After learning about the FBI’s questioning of Flynn, according to the report, Trump invited Comey to a private dinner meeting on Jan. 27, 2017 — the one in which Comey saysTrump asked for his “loyalty.” The special counsel’s office, citing the President’s Daily Diary, disputed Trump’s previous public statement saying he thought Comey “asked for the dinner” because “he wanted to stay on” as FBI director. “[S]ubstantial evidence corroborates Comey’s account of the dinner invitation and the request for loyalty,” the report states.
Likewise, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed that Trump in February 2017 asked the attendees of a homeland security briefing to leave the Oval Office so he could speak with Comey alone. Comey has testifiedthat Trump brought up Flynn, who had resigneda day earlier, saying: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”
Assessing that episode, the special counsel’s office wrote that “the President later denied that he cleared the room and asked Comey to ‘let[] Flynn go’—a denial that would have been unnecessary if he believed his request was a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
3· Trump’s reaction to the continuing Russia investigation
The Mueller report notes that Trump “attempted to prevent Sessions’s recusal, even after being told that Sessions was following DOJ conflict-of-interest rules.” Similarly, the report states that following the recusal, “the White House Counsel’s Office tried to cut off further contact with Sessions about the matter. The President continued to raise the issue of Sessions’s recusal and, when he had the opportunity, he pulled Sessions aside and urged him to unrecuse.”
Then-FBI Director James Comey had a congressional testimony on March 20, which made public for the first time the fact that the FBI was investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and looking into possible links between members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Under direction from Dana Boente, the acting attorney general for the Russia investigation, Comey declined to answer whether President Trump was under investigation.
After Comey’s testimony, the president proceeded to ask multiple intelligence leaders, including Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers to refute the news stories and make a public statement clarifying that Trump was not connected to Russian interference in the election. All refused.
In Rogers’ case, the ask was concerning enough that Deputy NSA Director Richard Ledgett, who had been on the call with Rogers, wrote up a memorandum documenting the content of the call, which was then placed in a safe. According to the report, Ledgett also “said it was the most unusual thing he had experienced in 40 years of government service.”
4· The firing of FBI Director James Comey
At a May 5, 2017, dinner, Trump told advisers and family members he wanted to fire Comey. At a May 8 meeting between the president and White House officials, according to Hunt’s notes, the group discussed a letter and recommendation written by Sessions and Rosenstein on Comey’s removal. And the next day, May 9, the president agreed that letter and memo from Rosenstein, citing Comey’s actions in the probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails, should be the basis for a termination letter to Comey, McGahn recalled. Comey was fired that day.
On May 10, according to news reports and not disputed by the White House, Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia.”
The Mueller report says there’s some evidence Trump felt the investigation was hurting his ability to get things done, particularly with Russia. Trump also may have felt Comey was insubordinate.
“Other evidence, however, indicates that the President wanted to protect himself from an investigation into his campaign,” the report says, citing Trump asking Comey for “loyalty” and Trump saying he should be able to tell the attorney general “who to investigate.”
The president “had a motive to put the FBI’s Russia investigation behind him,” the report says, saying that “the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.”
5· Trump’s efforts to remove the special counsel
Rosenstein appointed Mueller the special counsel to oversee the Russia inquiry on May 17, 2017.
Trump’s reaction to the appointment, according to the report, was to say, “This is the end of my Presidency.” He also became angry with Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation. Trump asked Sessions, “How could you let this happen, Jeff,” and then told Sessions he should resign.
On June 14, 2017, the Washington Post reportedthat the special counsel was, in fact, investigating whether Trump had attempted to obstruct justice by firing Comey. Trump responded to the news report by criticizing the investigation in a series of tweets over the next two days. Trump then called McGhan twice on June 17, 2017, and ordered him to call Rosenstein and have Mueller removed as special counsel based on the conflicts that Trump believed existed. “Mueller has to go” and “Call me back when you do it,” McGahn recalled Trump telling him on the second call, the report says. McGahn said he had no intention of relaying the president’s message to Rosenstein, and instead decided that he would resign if the president persisted.
Regarding the president’s intent, the report says there is evidence the president was aware that he should not have given McGhan those instructions.
“The President made the calls to McGahn after McGahn had specifically told the President that the White House Counsel’s Office — and McGahn himself — could not be involved in pressing conflict claims and that the President should consult with his personal counsel if he wished to raise conflicts,” the report says. “Instead of relying on his personal counsel to submit the conflicts claims, the President sought to use his official powers to remove the Special Counsel. And after the media reported on the President’s actions, he denied that he ever ordered McGahn to have the Special Counsel terminated and made repeated efforts to have McGahn deny the story. … Those denials are contrary to the evidence and suggest the President’s awareness that the direction to McGahn could be seen as improper.”
6· Efforts to curtail the special counsel’s investigation
In an Oval Office meeting on June 19, 2017, two days after Trump had tried to have the special counsel removed, the president dictated a message that he wanted Lewandowski to take to Sessions. The message was actually the outline of a speech that Trump wanted Sessions to give. According to Lewandowski’s notes quoted in the report, it went like this:
I know that I recused myself from certain things having to do with specific areas. But our POTUS . .. is being treated very unfairly. He shouldn’t have a Special Prosecutor/Counsel b/c he hasn’t done anything wrong. I was on the campaign w/ him for nine months, there were no Russians involved with him. I know it for a fact b/c I was there. He didn’t do anything wrong except he ran the greatest campaign in American history.
Now a group of people want to subvert the Constitution of the United States. I am going to meet with the Special Prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the Special Prosecutor move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections so that nothing can happen in future elections.
If that message had made it to Sessions and been accepted by him, it could have limited the scope of the investigation to only foreign interference on future elections, rather than the one that was being investigated.
But it didn’t get to Sessions. Lewandowski told investigators that he didn’t want to deliver the message over the phone and didn’t want to meet at the Justice Department — it was “Sessions’s turf,” according to the report — and scheduling conflicts kept them apart. So, for a month, the message stayed in a safe at Lewandowski’s home, he told investigators.
The special counsel’s analysis of this evidence concluded that the president sought to limit the special counsel’s review to only future elections after he had learned that his own conduct was part of the investigation.
7· Efforts to prevent public disclosure of Trump Tower meeting
The Mueller report provides a detailed analysis of Trump’s efforts to mislead the public or evade public disclosure about the now-infamous June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower between senior campaign officials, including Donald Trump Jr., and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. According to the report, Trump repeatedly directed his communications staff not to publicly disclose information about the meeting, and he rejected a proposed public statement from Trump Jr. that acknowledged the meeting was with “an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign.”
In written answers, Trump said he had no recollection of learning about the meeting until after the election.
8· Efforts to get the attorney general to take over the investigation
According to Sessions, the President asked him to reverse his recusal, and the ‘gist’ of the conversation was that the President wanted Sessions to unrecuse from ‘all of it,’ including the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation.
In July 2017, Trump asked Staff Secretary Rob Porter if Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand was “on the team” and would be interested in being the AG and in charge of the Russia investigation. Porter knew Brand, and Trump asked him to speak with her. But Porter told the special counsel’s office that he was uncomfortable with that, understood it to mean Trump wanted someone to end the Russia investigation, and didn’t do it.
In August 2018, Sessions appeared to respond, saying, “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”
Trump firedSessions the day after the midterm elections, Nov. 7, 2018.
In assessing the president’s intent, the Mueller report says there’s evidence the president wanted Sessions to take control of the Russia investigation and “supervise it in a way that would restrict its scope.”
9· Efforts to squash report that McGahn was ordered to have special counsel removed
According to the report, Trump’s personal counsel called the attorney for White House counsel McGahn and relayed that Trump wanted McGahn to put out a statement denying a New York Times story that Trump had asked him to fire the special counsel. There was just one problem: McGahn said the story was accurate on that point, and he refused to do it.
McGahn told investigators that he was summoned to the Oval Office on Feb. 6, 2018, and that the president told him the Times story “did not ‘look good’ and McGahn needed to correct it.” McGahn said Trump disputed that he told McGahn to “fire” the special counsel, and that he only wanted McGahn to raise conflict of interest issues with Rosenstein and let Rosenstein decide what to do. McGahn said he told the president his recollection of his marching orders differed, that he was told, “Call Rod [Rosenstein]. There are conflicts. Mueller has to go.” McGahn refused to “do a correction,” the report states.
According to McGahn, Trump also criticized McGahn for telling investigators that the president had asked him to have the special counsel removed, and for taking notes during their meeting. “Lawyers don’t take notes,” Trump told him.
The report concludes that, “Substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the Special Counsel terminated, the President acted for the purpose of influencing McGahn’s account in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the President’s conduct towards the investigation.”
10· Trump’s conduct toward Flynn, Manafort
After Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements, the press asked Trump whether he would pardon Flynn. Trump said, on Dec. 15, 2017, “I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens. Let’s see. I can say this: When you look at what’s gone on with the FBI and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.”
In January 2018, Manafort told former deputy campaign manager Richard Gates, who had been indicted along with Manafort on multiple felony counts at that point, that the president’s personal attorney had told him they would “take care of us.” Manafort told Gates they should “sit tight” and “we’ll be taken care of,” though he said no one used the word “pardon.”
On June 15, 2018, after Manafort’s bail was revoked, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, floated the possibility of a pardon in media interviews. Two months later, before Manafort pleaded guilty to charges in Washington, D.C., Giuliani told the Washington Post that Trump had asked for advice on pardoning Manafort and other aides and had been told not to do it until the Russia investigation was over.
The report says that the president’s counsel’s statements to Flynn’s counsel “could have had the potential to affect Flynn’s decision to cooperate, as well as the extent of that cooperation.
But with Manafort, “there is evidence that the President’s actions had the potential to influence Manafort’s decision whether to cooperate with the government,” and Trump’s public statements during the trial “had the potential to influence the trial jury.”
As for intent, the evidence “indicates that the President intended to encourage Manafort to not cooperate with the government.”
11· Trump’s conduct toward Cohen
In 2017, Cohen falsely stated under oath that the project had ended in January 2016, when in fact it had continued at least through June, when Trump had already become the presumptive Republican nominee. Cohen also inaccurately said that he had briefed Trump on the project just three times, and never considered travel to Russia. Cohen later reversed course after pleading guilty to lying to two congressional committees and cooperating with the government. The president, who had publicly and privately supported Cohen until this point, then began attacking his former attorney.
The report concludes that while there is evidence that Trump “knew Cohen provided false testimony to Congress,” it “does not establish that the President directed or aided” that false testimony.
As for the president’s actions having a “natural tendency” to prevent Cohen from being truthful, the report goes through Trump’s initially positive public and private messaging to Cohen following an FBI search in April 2018. During this period, the Trump Organization was paying Cohen’s legal fees, and Cohen remembers discussing a possible pardon with the president’s personal lawyer. But after reporting of Cohen’s decision to cooperate with the government in July 2018, Trump quickly shifted gears, calling Cohen a “rat” and saying that Cohen’s family members might have committed crimes. “The evidence concerning this sequence of events could support an inference that the President used inducements in the form of positive messages in an effort to get Cohen not to cooperate,” the report says, “and then turned to attacks and intimidation to deter the provision of information or undermine Cohen’s credibility once Cohen began cooperating.”
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