4 min ago
Trump on Mueller appointment: "This is the end of my Presidency"
In May 2017, after President Trump learned from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump “slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm f***ed.’”
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/robert-mueller-report-public/index.html
13 min ago
Trump told his White House lawyer to remove Mueller. He refused.
From CNN's Erica Orden
On June 17, 2017, after media reports indicated that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating whether President Trump had obstructed justice, Trump called former White House lawyer Don McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say Mueller "had conflicts of interest and must be removed."
McGahn declined to do so, deciding that he would "rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre."
See it:
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24 min ago
Mueller describes previously unknown effort by Trump to get Sessions to curtail investigation
From CNN's Kevin Liptak
Special counsel Robert Mueller described a previously unknown example of the President’s attempts to curtail the investigation involving Trump’s former campaign aide Cory Lewandowski.
Mueller says that on June 19, 2017, Trump met in the Oval Office with Lewandowski and dictated a message intended for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who at that point had recused himself from matters involving the probe.
In the message, Sessions was told to publicly announce the investigation was “‘very unfair’ to the President, the President had done nothing wrong, and Sessions planned to meet with the special counsel and ‘let [him] move forward with investigation election meddling for future elections.’” Lewandowski told Trump he understood his instructions.
A month later, Trump checked back in with Lewandowski on the status of his message. Lewandowski said the message would be delivered soon.
Ultimately, Lewandowski declined to deliver the message personally, instead asking a senior White House official — Rick Dearborn — to do it instead. Mueller’s report says Dearborn was “uncomfortable with the task and did not follow through.”
See it:
https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/di...867c0eb241.png
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-ne...lic/index.html
1 min ago
Mueller declined to prosecute Donald Trump, Jr.
From CNN's Kara Scannell
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Photo by Shannon Finney/Getty Images
Robert Mueller's team declined to prosecute Donald Trump, Jr. and members of the campaign for campaign finance violations for their participation in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in part because they couldn't prove that they "willfully" violated the law.
Here's what it says in the report:"Taking into account the high burden to establish a culpable mental state in a campaign-finance prosecution and the difficulty in establishing the required valuation, the Office decided not to pursue criminal campaign-finance charges against Trump Jr. or other campaign officials for the events culminating in the June 9 meeting." Mueller's team explained, "The Office ultimately concluded that, even if the principal legal questions were resolved favorably to the government, a prosecution would encounter difficulties proving that Campaign officials or individuals connected to the Campaign willfully violated the law."
3 min ago
Mueller: Obstruction by Trump failed because others refused to "carry out orders"
In the report, special counsel Robert Mueller outlined why obstruction by President Trump failed. It failed because others refused to "carry out orders.""The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests," the report said."(James) Comey did not end the investigation of (Michael) Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn's prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. (Don) McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the special counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President's order. (Corey) Lewandowski and Dearborn did not deliver the President 's message to (Jeff) Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President's direction to have the special counsel removed, despite the President's multiple demands that he do so. Consistent with that pattern, the evidence we obtained would not support potential obstruction charges against the President's aides and associates beyond those already filed," the report said.
See it:
https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/di...bff976d2b8.png
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-ne...lic/index.html