Mueller report details Trump's efforts to halt probe
WASHINGTON, United States — Donald Trump's lawyers and advisers repeatedly rebuffed attempts by the president to halt Robert Mueller's investigation, according to the special counsel's report published on Thursday.
On one occasion, White House counsel Don McGahn even prepared a resignation letter after coming under pressure from Trump to put an end to the special counsel's probe, the report said.
Trump's efforts to remove Mueller began after press reports indicated that the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election had widened to include whether the president had committed obstruction of justice.
On June 17, 2017, Trump called McGahn twice at home "and directed him to call the Acting Attorney General (Rod Rosenstein) and say that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed," the report said.
"On the first call, McGahn recalled that the president said something like, 'You gotta do this. You gotta call Rod,'" the report said.
McGahn told Trump he would see what he could do, but "did not intend to act on the request."
On the second call, the report said, McGahn recalled the president telling him that "Mueller has to go" and "Call me back when you do it."
McGahn, who was interviewed by Mueller's team, said that he "left the president with the impression that (he) would call Rosenstein."
Trapped
"McGahn recalled feeling trapped because he did not plan to follow the president's directive but did not know what he would say the next time the president called," the report said.
"McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre," the report said.
The Saturday Night Massacre refers to a bid by president Richard Nixon in 1973 to thwart the Watergate investigation.
The report said McGahn called White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and told him he was resigning because the president had asked him to "do crazy shit."
Priebus and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon persuaded McGahn not to quit and he returned to work at the White House, the report said.
Mueller's conflicts of interest, according to the president, were that the special counsel had once worked for a law firm that represented people affiliated with Trump, that he had interviewed for the position of FBI director, and that he had once disputed fees relating to his membership in a Trump golf course.
The president's advisors "pushed back on his assertion of conflicts, telling the president they did not count as true conflicts," the report said.
Bannon, for example, told Trump that the purported conflicts were "ridiculous" and could not come close to justifying removing Mueller, according to the report.
McGahn did eventually resign as White House counsel, in October 2018.
The Justice Department says it has given House Republicans new classified information related to the Russia investigation after lawmakers had threatened to hold officials in contempt of Congress or even impeach them.
A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan says Saturday that the department has partially complied with subpoenas from the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees after officials turned over more than a thousand new documents this week.
House Republicans had given the Justice Department and FBI a Friday deadline for all documents, most of which are related to the origins of the FBI's Russia investigation and the handling of its probe into Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails. — AP
Documents released by the US Department of Justice indicate that a top advisor to then-candidate Donald Trump said as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind a hack of Democratic party emails.
Trump and his surrogates have suggested that Kiev hacked Democratic National Committee servers and planted evidence to frame Russia, as a way of undermining the legitimacy of the US leader's election.
Trump has pressured Ukraine's president to investigate that debunked conspiracy theory as well as his election rival Joe Biden -- a move at the crux of an impeachment investigation against him in the House of Representatives. — AFP
Democrats accuses President Donald Trump on Friday of using the US Justice Department as a political tool after it opened a criminal probe into its own handling of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
News of the inquiry, which implied wrongdoing by justice officials in the previous administration of Barack Obama, leaked late Thursday as the White House struggled to push back against a Democratic-led impeachment investigation targeting the Republican president.
The inquiry could further muddy the political waters in Washington, raising questions about the now-ended Russia investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that saw 34 individuals indicted and eight convictions, including top members of Trump's 2016 election team. — AFP
The Justice Department has opened a criminal inquiry into the Russia investigation that examined whether Donald Trump colluded with Moscow during the 2016 presidential election, US media report.
Justice Department officials have switched an administrative review of the investigation, overseen by Attorney General William Barr, to a criminal inquiry, The New York Times said, citing two sources close to the matter.
The move gives lead prosecutor John Durham, the US attorney for Connecticut, the power convene a grand jury, file criminal charges and issue subpoenas for witness testimony and documents. — AFP
Australia's prime minister plays down the significance of a call from Donald Trump as "brief and uneventful", despite mounting controversy over a politically fraught offer to help the US president.
Scott Morrison says Trump had simply asked him to establish "a point of contact" within Australia's government for an investigation that the US president hopes will discredit findings that Russia helped his 2016 election campaign.
Morrison says he was "happy" to fulfil Trump's request on the basis that the country's ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, had already offered Australia's assistance in the investigation back in May. — AFP
The Washington Post reports that US President Donald Trump told Russia's foreign minister and ambassador that he was unconcerned about their country's interference in the 2016 elections.
Trump made the previously unreported comments during the same May 2017 Oval Office meeting in which he famously revealed highly classified information on the Islamic State group.
During the conversation he reportedly told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that he was not bothered by their country's meddling because the United States did the same in other countries, according to three former officials who requested anonymity. — AFP
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