1/ Today @nytimes reported that last June, a month after Comey was fired and Mueller was appointed Special Counsel, Trump ordered Mueller fired.
Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit

Link to tweet

2/ According to @nytimes, Trump argued Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation:

3/ None of the three represent actual conflicts of interest for Mueller. First, Trump argued that Mueller had resigned from a Trump golf club years earlier due to a fees dispute. It’s hard to see that preventing Mueller from being fair.

4/ Second, Trump argued that Mueller had a conflict because he previously worked at the law firm that represented his son-in-law Jared Kushner. If anything, that would suggest that Mueller would be favorable to Trump.

5/ Trump also argued Mueller had a conflict because Trump interviewed him to be FBI Director shortly before his appointment. That’s an odd argument to make—Trump thought he was impartial enough to oversee the entire FBI, but not impartial enough to oversee this investigation?

6/ These appear to be thinly veiled excuses to fire Mueller, and they came after Trump already asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation and fired Comey. Trump offered a false public explanation for the Comey firing as well.

7/ This new data point is really important, because Mueller has to prove that Trump was acting with “corrupt” intent. In other words, that his intent when he fired Comey was to impede the FBI investigation to help himself or his associates.

8/ Trump’s defense would likely be that he had a genuine belief that there was nothing to the Russia investigation and that it was a waste of time. He also could argue that he was ignorant of the gravity of his actions and thought firing Comey wouldn’t impede the investigation.

9/ Everything turns on intent because it is lawful for the President to fire the FBI Director for legitimate reasons. If Trump thought Comey did a bad job, he could fire Comey for that reason. This latest evidence helps Mueller undercut Trump’s likely defense.

10/ As a starting point, Trump’s desire to fire Mueller in June is another piece of evidence that suggests that he had an intense desire to end the Russia investigation. That’s an obvious point but it’s worth mentioning.

11/ More importantly, the fact that Trump came up with his own excuses to fire Mueller suggests that he knew that firing Mueller in order to end the Russia investigation was unlawful but he wanted to fire him anyway. That’s really powerful evidence for Mueller.

12/ Even more importantly, Trump tried to fire Mueller *after* he knew he was under investigation for obstructing justice and heard a lot of legal analysis and commentary discussing the potential illegality of his actions.

13/ That put him on notice that trying to undermine the investigation would be a crime. If I was prosecuting this case, I would present evidence that Trump read or viewed analysis discussing obstruction of justice to show that he knew obstructing the investigation was a crime.

14/ Mueller could also contrast how Trump fired Comey with how he tried to fire him. The fact that Trump came up with own excuses for firing Mueller but initially did not do so for firing Comey could be used to infer that he became more sophisticated about hiding his true intent.

15/ Altogether, this is strong evidence that greatly helps Mueller’s case against Trump. Some have speculated that McGahn leaked this story. If he did, why? Could he be trying to curry favor with Mueller? Presumably Mueller knows the facts underlying this story already.

16/ This story raises more questions than answers. But the bottom line is that it suggests that it is more likely that Mueller will ultimately conclude that Trump obstructed justice. /end