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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFlynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It
Murray Waas
Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Muellerincluding highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trumps own top aidesprovides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsels work, would then decide on turning over that report to Congress for the House of Representatives to consider whether to instigate impeachment proceedings.
The central incident in the case that the president obstructed justice was provided by former FBI Director James B. Comey, who testified that Trump pressed Comey, in a private Oval Office meeting on February 14, 2017, to shut down an FBI criminal investigation of Trumps former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, Comey has testified the president told him.
In an effort to convince Mueller that President Trump did not obstruct justice, the presidents attorneys have argued that the president could not have broken the law because the president did not know that Flynn was under criminal investigation when he pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn. In a confidential January 29 letter to the special counsel first reported by The New York Times, two of the presidents attorneys, John Dowd (who no longer represents Trump) and Jay Sekulow, maintained that the president did not obstruct justice because, even though Flynn had been questioned by the FBI, Trump believed that the FBI investigation was over, and that Flynn had been told that hed been cleared.
On its face, this is a counter-intuitive argumentfor if Trump believed that Flynn had been cleared and was no longer under investigation, there would have been no reason for the president to lean on Comey to end the FBIs investigationtelling Comey that Trump hoped that Comey would be able to see your way clear to letting this go. Yet Trumps attorneys have pursued this line of argument with the special counsel because perjury and obstruction cases depend largely on whether a prosecutor can demonstrate the intent and motivation of the person they want to charge. Its not enough to prove that the person under investigation attempted to impede an ongoing criminal investigation; the statute requires a prosecutor to prove that the person did so with the corrupt intent to protect either himself or someone else from prosecution.
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https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/31/what-trump-knew-and-when-he-knew-it/
FarPoint
(12,428 posts)Comey recorded the Oval Office meeting with tRump where Comey refused to kiss tRumps ring.