Jul 24, 2019 · Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker disagreed Wednesday with the way former Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded his nearly two-year-long investigation.
Nov 08, 2018 · Newly anointed acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker has said there is “certainly” a legal way for president Trump to fire special counsel Robert Mueller—and that it wouldn’t constitute ...
Yesterday, less than 24 hours after the midterm polls closed, Trump requested and received the attorney general’s resignation and appointed Matthew Whitaker, the …
Rantt Rundown, Day 761 of Trump’s presidency – Today’s top stories: 1. The case for obstruction of justice: Over the last two years, the American people have watched as President Trump and House Republicans publicly and brazenly attempted to obstruct Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s attack on US democracy.. Today, The New York Times published a …
Whitaker, too, shied away from calling for Mueller’s firing in his public comments on the matter last year. What he suggested was that Sessions’s eventual replacement should seem to let the special counsel continue — but that he should make behind the scenes moves to interfere with things.
Finally, though things may look ominous, it is also possible that in the end Whitaker will let Mueller’s work largely continue — whether due to fear of exposing himself to obstruction charges, fear of political blowback from Capitol Hill, or because the investigation is just too far along to derail at this point.
Mueller, President Donald Trump took to Twitter with a message that reads, in part, “NO OBSTRUCTION!”. That’s not at all what the Mueller report says, though.
This includes Trump’s efforts to prevent and then reverse then-Attorney General Jeff Session’s decision to recuse himself on issues related to the Russia investigation, as well as multiple attempts by the president to convince officials to make statements to the public clarifying that the FBI was not personally investigating him.
Trump responded to the news report by criticizing the investigation in a series of tweets over the next two days. Trump then called McGhan twice on June 17, 2017, and ordered him to call Rosenstein and have Mueller removed as special counsel based on the conflicts that Trump believed existed.
Days later, Trump began to tell his White House advisers that Mueller couldn’t serve as special counsel because of conflicts of interest. Specifically, the report says, Trump said Mueller had interviewed to become FBI director prior to being named special counsel, that he had been employed by a law firm that had represented people connected to Trump, and that Mueller had disputed membership fees that he was charged by a Trump golf course in Virginia. But Trump advisers told him that those did not count as conflicts, and the Justice Department also said that Mueller’s previous legal work would not prevent him from acting as special counsel. Trump, the report indicates, still directed McGahn to talk to Rosenstein about the issue, which McGhan declined to do. McGahn told Trump he should discuss it with his personal lawyer, but that it would look as though he was “still trying to meddle in [the] investigation” and “knocking out Mueller” would be “ [a]nother fact used to claim obst [ruction] of just [ice.]”
After the May 2017 appointment of the special counsel, for instance: “According to Sessions, the President asked him to reverse his recusal so that Sessions could direct the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton, and the ‘gist’ of the conversation was that the President wanted Sessions to unrecuse from ‘all of it,’ including the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation,” the Mueller report says.
“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” Mueller wrote.
Some of this section of the Mueller report is redacted due to an ongoing matter. The report says that the president’s counsel’s statements to Flynn’s counsel “could have had the potential to affect Flynn’s decision to cooperate, as well as the extent of that cooperation.