Huddled with his twentysomething communications director on Air Force One somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, Donald Trump needed a cover story. The news that the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, had hosted Russian operatives at Trump Tower a year earlier was about to erupt in the headlines.
'Nunes memo' published after Trump declassifies controversial document
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Within a week, Trump would argue that the meeting, at which the younger Trump hoped to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton, was unremarkable: “most people would have taken that meeting”, he would say. But by then he was in a corner.
Up in the air on the way back from a G20 meeting in Germany, with Hope Hicks, a former model and one of his most trusted aides, Trump still felt he had room to move. He decided to exhale a great Trumpian smokescreen, crafting a statement depicting the meeting as “primarily” about “the adoption of Russian children”.
Whatever private fears or concerns prompted Trump to push that cover story have now probably multiplied, significantly.
As the Trump presidency stumbles into its second year, Robert Mueller, the powerful independent prosecutor investigating the president’s Russia ties, appears startlingly close to concluding a case that could offer damning evidence that Trump or his subordinates committed an obstruction of justice in the Russia affair, former prosecutors and Washington insiders say.
Such a case, which experts advise is probably only one slice of Mueller’s overall inquiry, could represent a hazard not only for Trump but also for his family members and closest aides. Those include Hicks, Trump Jr and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who may soon face a decision akin to the one taken by former national security adviser Michael Flynn to cooperate with prosecutors.
The two impeachment proceedings advanced against presidents in the last century – Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – both included an obstruction of justice charge. Trump and his family members have denied all wrongdoing, as has Hicks through a lawyer.
While it is unclear whether Trump recognizes the gravity of his situation, the president clearly understands that he is in an increasingly breathless fight. Trump has dispatched loyalists in Congress and the conservative media to attack the investigators as biased partisans compromised from the start.
In one of his most audacious sallies yet, Trump on Friday ignored the public protests of the justice department and the FBI to approve the release of a classified memo drafted under the aegis of the House intelligence chairman, Devin Nunes.
Critics across the political spectrum have branded the so-called Nunes memo, which criticizes the FBI’s conduct of surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page, as a flagrant attack on the bureau and on the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation.
Asked on Friday whether he still had confidence in Rosenstein, whom he himself appointed, Trump told reporters: “You figure that one out.”
The president is trying “to torch institutions that pose a threat,” said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog. “I don’t think there’s any gentle way to say that.”
But Andrew Wright, a former White House associate counsel and a professor at Savannah Law School, warned that by seeking to influence or discredit investigators, Trump was only deepening his predicament.
Obstruction of justice in the political sense, where Trump is mired now, it’s like quicksand – you can’t better your own situation by thrashing around. The only thing you can do is be still and wait for someone else to bail you out. The problem for the president is he keeps thrashing around, and he keeps sinking further into the mire and muck.
As the circle of sniping and retaliation becomes more tightly wound, close observers of Washington have warned, the risk grows that something major, finally, will break – whether that means the balance of power in government, or Trump’s backbone of support in Congress and across the country.
“I think it’s clear the president is scrambling,” said Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress action fund in Washington. “The president is looking at any way to turn off this investigation to protect himself. In some ways it’s a quite natural reaction: if you committed a crime, knew you were guilty and had a prosecutor coming after you and yet you had the ability to mobilise against them, you would.”
But even if Trump manages to win a round in the fight, there appear to be many still to come. Mueller appears to be pursuing other cases with repercussions for the president in parallel with the obstruction of justice case, potentially including investigations of collusion with Russia, money laundering, fraud or making false statements.
'Nunes memo' published after Trump declassifies controversial document
Read more
Within a week, Trump would argue that the meeting, at which the younger Trump hoped to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton, was unremarkable: “most people would have taken that meeting”, he would say. But by then he was in a corner.
Up in the air on the way back from a G20 meeting in Germany, with Hope Hicks, a former model and one of his most trusted aides, Trump still felt he had room to move. He decided to exhale a great Trumpian smokescreen, crafting a statement depicting the meeting as “primarily” about “the adoption of Russian children”.
Whatever private fears or concerns prompted Trump to push that cover story have now probably multiplied, significantly.
As the Trump presidency stumbles into its second year, Robert Mueller, the powerful independent prosecutor investigating the president’s Russia ties, appears startlingly close to concluding a case that could offer damning evidence that Trump or his subordinates committed an obstruction of justice in the Russia affair, former prosecutors and Washington insiders say.
Such a case, which experts advise is probably only one slice of Mueller’s overall inquiry, could represent a hazard not only for Trump but also for his family members and closest aides. Those include Hicks, Trump Jr and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who may soon face a decision akin to the one taken by former national security adviser Michael Flynn to cooperate with prosecutors.
The two impeachment proceedings advanced against presidents in the last century – Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – both included an obstruction of justice charge. Trump and his family members have denied all wrongdoing, as has Hicks through a lawyer.
While it is unclear whether Trump recognizes the gravity of his situation, the president clearly understands that he is in an increasingly breathless fight. Trump has dispatched loyalists in Congress and the conservative media to attack the investigators as biased partisans compromised from the start.
In one of his most audacious sallies yet, Trump on Friday ignored the public protests of the justice department and the FBI to approve the release of a classified memo drafted under the aegis of the House intelligence chairman, Devin Nunes.
Critics across the political spectrum have branded the so-called Nunes memo, which criticizes the FBI’s conduct of surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page, as a flagrant attack on the bureau and on the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation.
Asked on Friday whether he still had confidence in Rosenstein, whom he himself appointed, Trump told reporters: “You figure that one out.”
The president is trying “to torch institutions that pose a threat,” said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog. “I don’t think there’s any gentle way to say that.”
But Andrew Wright, a former White House associate counsel and a professor at Savannah Law School, warned that by seeking to influence or discredit investigators, Trump was only deepening his predicament.
Obstruction of justice in the political sense, where Trump is mired now, it’s like quicksand – you can’t better your own situation by thrashing around. The only thing you can do is be still and wait for someone else to bail you out. The problem for the president is he keeps thrashing around, and he keeps sinking further into the mire and muck.
As the circle of sniping and retaliation becomes more tightly wound, close observers of Washington have warned, the risk grows that something major, finally, will break – whether that means the balance of power in government, or Trump’s backbone of support in Congress and across the country.
“I think it’s clear the president is scrambling,” said Max Bergmann, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress action fund in Washington. “The president is looking at any way to turn off this investigation to protect himself. In some ways it’s a quite natural reaction: if you committed a crime, knew you were guilty and had a prosecutor coming after you and yet you had the ability to mobilise against them, you would.”
But even if Trump manages to win a round in the fight, there appear to be many still to come. Mueller appears to be pursuing other cases with repercussions for the president in parallel with the obstruction of justice case, potentially including investigations of collusion with Russia, money laundering, fraud or making false statements.
