Newspaper & online reporters and analysts explore the cultural and news stories of the week, with photos frequently added by Esco20, and reveal their significance (with a slant towards Esco 20's opinions)
April 19, 2019
THE MUELLER REPORT, PARTIALLY REDACTED, IS RELEASED: Special Counsel's blockbuster findings on Russian collusion in the 2016 election are finally published to the American public.
Report Reveals Trump’s Efforts to Thwart Russian Inquiry.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, issued his highly anticipated report on Thursday.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times
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Robert S. Mueller III revealed a frantic, months long effort by President Trump to thwart the investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, cataloging in a report released on Thursday the attempts by Mr. Trump to escape an inquiry that imperiled his presidency from the start.
The much-anticipated report laid out how a team of prosecutors working for Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, wrestled with whether the president’s actions added up to an indictable offense of obstruction of justice for a sitting president. They ultimately decided not to charge Mr. Trump, citing numerous legal and factual constraints, but pointedly declined to exonerate him.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mr. Mueller’s investigators wrote. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
Mr. Mueller inherited a sweeping inquiry 23 months ago into whether Mr. Trump or any of his aides had coordinated with the Russian government’s campaign to sabotage the presidential election. The report found numerous contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russians in the months before and after the election — meetings in pursuit of business deals, policy initiatives and political dirt about Hillary Clinton — but said there was “insufficient evidence” to establish that there had been a criminal conspiracy
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While the report does not find that the president or his campaign aides had committed any crimes in their contacts with Russians, it lays bare how Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power. When a federal inquiry was started to investigate the Russian effort, he took numerous steps to try to undermine it.
'He's asking me to do crazy s**t': White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit when he was ordered by Trump to fire Mueller and COVER IT UP, Mueller report reveals
Vol. II, Page 4: On June 17, 2017 the president called McGahn at home and directed him to call the acting attorney general and say that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. 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.
We knew that Mr. Trump had ordered his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, in June 2017 to have the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, fire Mr. Mueller, and that Mr. McGahn had refused to do so. We did not know that the president called him at home to pressure him. The “Saturday Night Massacre” refers to the Watergate episode in which the Nixon administration’s attorney general and deputy attorney general both resigned rather than carry out President Nixon’s order to fire the prosecutor investigating that scandal, leading to a severe political backlash.
— Charlie Savage
If there’s no collusion and no obstruction, why so many lies?
Vol II, Page 77: The President and White House aides initially advanced a pretextual reason to the press and the public for Comey’s termination … The initial reliance on a pretextual justification could support an inference that the President had concerns about providing the real reason for the firing, although the evidence does not resolve whether those concerns were personal, political, or both.
One of the biggest questions of the past two years — something that fueled the news coverage, the federal investigation and congressional scrutiny — is why so many people around Mr. Trump lied, misled and changed their stories. People hoping that Mr. Mueller would resolve those questions will be disappointed. Time and again, Mr. Mueller seems as confused as anyone else about the motives. — Matt Apuzzo
Trump’s lawyers massaged Michael Cohen’s testimony, but Mueller did not establish that Trump told him to lie.
Vol. II, Page 153: With regard to Cohen’s false statements to Congress, while there is evidence, described below, that the President knew Cohen provided false testimony to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen’s false testimony.
Mr. Cohen lied to Congress about the Trump Organization’s business dealings with Russia, prompting accusations that Mr. Trump had instructed him to lie. Mr. Mueller’s report paints a far murkier view. Investigators found evidence that Mr. Trump’s legal team advised Mr. Cohen to keep his statements to Congress “short and tight, not elaborate, stay on message, and not contradict the President.” Mr. Mueller made no finding on what, if any, role Mr. Trump played in that effort. — Matt Apuzzo
Mueller suggests a pattern of behavior by Trump to harm the investigation.
Vol. II, Page 157: The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance.
Many of the incidents Mr. Mueller examined for possible obstruction of justice had been the subject of public news reports and dismissed by Mr. Trump and his allies over the last two years. But Mr. Mueller tries to weave them together into a pattern of behavior that has implications for understanding Mr. Trump’s actions and intent. — Nicholas Fandos
POSTED AT 12:54 PM
Stopping the exchange of possibly fake, compromising tapes of Trump’s conduct in Russia.
Vol. II, Page 27: Comey’s briefing included the Steele reporting’s unverified allegation that the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a similar claim may have reached candidate Trump. On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, “Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know ....” 10/30/16 Text Message, Rtskhiladze to Cohen. Rtskhiladze said “tapes” referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Russia... Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen.
In a footnote of the report, a Russian businessman is quoted as stating via text message that he had “stopped flow” of possibly fake, compromising tapes of Mr. Trump’s conduct in Russia. This offers a new detail on the sensational question of whether, as claimed in the unverified dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Mr. Trump was caught with prostitutes on video in his Moscow hotel in 2013. But the report notes that the Russian businessman who bragged during the campaign that he had “stopped” such tapes evidently later said he believed the tapes in question were “fake.” — Scott Shane
Mueller says obstruction laws apply to presidents who use their executive powers corruptly.
Vol. II, Page 177: Accordingly, based on the analysis above, we were not persuaded by the argument that the President has blanket constitutional immunity to engage in acts that would corruptly obstruct justice through the exercise of otherwise-valid Article II powers protecting the integrity of its own proceedings and the proceedings of Article III courts and grand juries.
Mr. Mueller dissected and rejected the argument that it would be unconstitutional to apply obstruction of justice laws to the president’s use of his executive powers like firing a subordinate or supervising the Justice Department’s opening and closing of cases. This repudiated an argument laid out not only by Mr. Trump’s lawyers, but also by Mr. Barr in an unsolicited, 19-page memo he wrote for the administration before the president appointed him as attorney general. That means Mr. Mueller left open the possibility of charging Mr. Trump with obstruction after he is no longer president – a possibility that Mr. Barr has tried to take off the table. — Charlie Savage
POSTED AT 12:46 PM
The report explicitly states that the investigation did not clear the president.
Vol. II, Page 182: If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.
Whether Mr. Trump engaged in obstruction of justice involves complicated legal and constitutional issues that do not apply to ordinary citizens, but the report explicitly says that the inquiry did not clear the president. Discussing whether the president could have obstructed justice while exercising his constitutional authority, such as by firing James B. Comey as the director of the F.B.I., the report notes that Congress is empowered to step in to stop the corrupt use of presidential power. Democrats in Congress will surely seize on that language as justification for their burgeoning inquiries. — Sharon LaFraniere
To find evidence of coordination, both Russia and the Trump campaign would have had to agree to act.
Vol. I, Page 2: An agreement “requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to other’s actions or interests.”
It was not enough for investigators simply to show the Trump campaign knew what the Russians were up to, and responded. Trump associates had to specifically agree with the Russians to violate the law.
— Sharon LaFraniere
POSTED AT 11:19 AM
Mr. Trump likely fired James B. Comey for refusing to clear the president’s name.
Vol. II, Page 75: Substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst for the president’s decision to fire Comey was Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the president’s repeated requests that Comey make such an announcement.
Mr. Mueller effectively finds that the White House’s initial explanation for the firing was untrue. White House officials said that Mr. Comey was dismissed over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The administration’s ever-changing justification for that firing led to speculation that Mr. Trump had fired him to sabotage the Russia investigation.
— Matt Apuzzo
The report indicates that Michael D. Cohen never traveled to Prague to meet with Russians.
Vol. II, Page 139: In early May 2017, Cohen received requests from Congress to provide testimony and documents in connection with congressional investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. At that time, Cohen understood Congress’s interest in him to be focused on the allegations in the Steele reporting concerning a meeting Cohen allegedly had with Russian officials in Prague during the campaign. Cohen had never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false. On May 18, 2017, Cohen met with the President to discuss the request from Congress, and the President instructed Cohen that he should cooperate because there was nothing there.
This further undercuts explosive information in the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the former British spy. — Adam Goldman
Barr heavily redacted evidence about the Trump campaign’s outreach to WikiLeaks.
Vol. I, Pages 53-54: [REDACTED] Manafort also [REDACTED] wanted to be kept apprised of any developments with WikiLeaks and separately told Gates to keep in touch [REDACTED] about future WikiLeaks releases. According to Gates, by the late summer of 2016, the Trump Campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks. [REDACTED] while Trump and Gates were driving to LaGuardia Airport. [REDACTED], shortly after the call candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming. [REDACTED]
Mr. Barr said this type of material must be kept secret because it was relevant to a continuing criminal matter. That is probably, at a minimum, the indictment of the former Trump adviser Roger Stone Jr., who is charged with lying about his participation in such efforts. But this raises a larger question: whether the hidden evidence shows that the Trump campaign conspired with WikiLeaks. At his news conference on Thursday morning, Mr. Barr said any campaign collusion with WikiLeaks could not amount to a criminal conspiracy because WikiLeaks’ publication of the emails was not a crime so long as it did not help Russia hacking them. —Charlie Savage
POSTED AT 12:25 PM
The special counsel found evidence of plenty of other crimes and made 14 referrals.
Vol. II, Page D-3: During the course of the investigation, the Office periodically identified evidence of potential criminal activity that was outside the scope of the Special Counsel’s jurisdiction established by the Acting Attorney General. After consultation with the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the Office referred that evidence to appropriate law enforcement authorities, principally other components of the Department of Justice and the FBI.
After Michael T. Flynn’s lawyer refused to share information about what he was telling the special counsel’s team, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer said the president would be informed of Flynn’s ‘hostility.’
Vol. II, Page 6: When Flynn’s counsel reiterated that Flynn could no longer share information pursuant to a joint defense agreement, the president’s personal counsel said he would make sure that the President knew that Flynn’s actions reflected ‘hostility’ towards the president.
The report does not state what the president might do in response, if anything. But the episode is part of a pattern, laid out in the report, of the president or his lawyers trying to determine what former aides were telling the special counsel, praising those who refused to cooperate and warning those who did help the special counsel’s team. —Sharon LaFraniere
POSTED AT 12:06 PM
Mueller explains his decision not to interview the president.
Vol. II, Page 13: Ultimately, while we believed that we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the President’s testimony, we chose not to do so. We made that decision in view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that based on the significant body of evidence we had already obtained of the President’s actions and his public and private statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the President’s testimony.
Without an interview, Mr. Mueller never had a chance to question the president about the central question of the obstruction investigation: what was his intention when he took a range of actions that could have impeded the investigation? —Michael S. Schmidt
POSTED AT 12:05 PM
Trump called the appointment of Mueller the ‘end of my presidency.’
Vol. II, Page 4: On May 17, 2017, the Acting Attorney General for the Russia investigation appointed a special counsel to conduct the investigation and related matters. The president reacted to news that a special counsel had been appointed by telling advisors that it was ‘the end of his presidency’ and demanding that Sessions resign. Sessions submitted his resignation, but the president ultimately did not accept it. The president told aides that the special counsel had conflicts of interest and suggested that the special counsel therefore could not serve. The president’s advisors told him the asserted conflicts were meritless and had already been considered by the department of justice.
The president immediately recognized the threat of the investigation. When he learned of Mr. Mueller’s appointment, he slumped in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”
He also lashed out at the attorney general for what Mr. Trump viewed as a failure to protect him. This would ultimately become a key consideration for the special counsel in debating whether the president obstructed justice, or sought to. — Maggie Haberman
POSTED AT 11:58 AM
K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, did not trust the president.
Vol. II, Page 3: Shortly after requesting Flynn’s resignation and speaking privately to Comey, the President sought to have Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland draft an internal letter stating that the President had not directed Flynn to discuss sanctions with Kislyak. McFarland declined because she did not know whether that was true, and a White House Counsel’s Office attorney thought that the request would look like a quid pro quo for an ambassadorship she had been offered.
Even the president’s closest advisers were reluctant to protect Mr. Trump because they could not be sure he was telling the truth. — Adam Goldman
POSTED AT 11:55 AM
It’s about ‘coordination’ — not ‘collusion.’
Vol. I, Page 2: Like collusion, “coordination” does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement—tacit or express—between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.
Mr. Trump likes to say there was “no collusion,” and Mr. Barr used that term again in his news conference on Thursday morning. But collusion is not a legal concept. In looking for evidence of a criminal conspiracy, Mr. Mueller said he was instead looking for whether there was evidence of “coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia in its election interference activities. He decided that the evidence fell short of meeting that standard.
— Charlie Savage
POSTED AT 11:53 AM
Mueller found several prominent Trump-Russia contacts — and a Republican platform change — were innocuous.
Vol. I, Page 10: The Office investigated several other events that have been publicly reported to involve potential Russia-related contacts. For example, the investigation established that interactions between Russian Ambassador Kislyak and Trump Campaign officials both at the candidate’s April 2016 foreign policy speech in Washington, D.C., and during the week of the Republican National Convention were brief, public, and non-substantive. And the investigation did not establish that one Campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican Party platform on providing assistance to Ukraine were undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia.
Reporters circled for months around rumors of meetings between members of the Trump campaign, including Jeff Sessions, then a senator, and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the time, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington and elsewhere. There were also lingering questions about why a portion of the Republican Party platform about Ukraine had changed during summer 2016. People involved in each had publicly denied any untoward behavior, and Mr. Mueller appears to have confirmed that the meetings were “non-substantive.” His assessment of the platform change is more nuanced, but ultimately did not “establish” the platform change had been directed by Mr. Trump or Russia. —Nicholas Fandos
POSTED AT 11:52 AM
Mr. Mueller said that one of the complications he faced in building an obstruction case was Mr. Trump’s authority as the head of the executive branch.
Vol. II, Page 7: Several features of the conduct we investigated distinguish it from typical obstruction-of-justice cases. First, the investigation concerned the President, and some of his actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts within his Article II authority, which raises constitutional issues discussed below. At the same time, the President’s position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses—all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.
Mr. Mueller is saying that Mr. Trump’s powers as president were tied in with the actions he took that could have constituted obstruction, like ousting James B. Comey as F.B.I. director. This made building a case more difficult because Mr. Trump had the authority as president to take many of the actions that were scrutinized. — Michael S. Schmidt
POSTED AT 11:51 AM
Trump tried to limit what would be publicly disclosed about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer
Vol. II, Page 5: On several occasions, the president directed aides not to publicly disclose the emails setting up the June 9 [2016] meeting, suggesting that the emails would not leak and that the number of lawyers with access to them should be limited. Before the emails became public, the president edited a press statement for Trump Jr. by deleting a line that acknowledged that the meeting was with ‘an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign’ and instead said only the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children. When the press asked questions about the president’s involvement in Trump Jr.’s statement, the president’s personal lawyer repeatedly denied the president had played any role.
This confirms a New York Times report in July 2017 that disclosed that the president had helped draft the misleading statement made by his son Donald Trump Jr. and pushed for a version that did not reveal the true nature of the meeting. That The Times learned of the meeting at the time shook the president and was a key factor in what was a tumultuous summer for the White House. — Maggie Haberman
POSTED AT 11:48 AM
During the campaign, Paul Manafort discussed with a Russian associate a plan to let Russia control part of Ukraine.
Vol. I, Pages 6-7: Both men believed the plan would require candidate Trump’s assent to succeed (were he to be elected president.) They also discussed the status of the Trump campaign and Manafort’s strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states.
This suggests that Russia was trying to influence the Trump campaign to support a plan that would have allowed Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine, which would have been a huge victory for the Kremlin. Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with the Russian associate before their Aug. 2, 2016, meeting — and for some period afterward, the report said. — Sharon LaFraniere
POSTED AT 11:44 AM
President Trump wanted an attorney general who would protect him.
Vol. II, Page 5: In early summer 2017, the president called Sessions at home and again asked him to reverse his recusal from the Russia investigation.
The president instructed Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, in 2017 to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself. The president wanted an attorney general who would shield the president, and his efforts to put Mr. Sessions back in charge of the Russia investigation showed he actively interfered in Mr. Sessions’s recusal as a possible act of obstruction. — Adam Goldman
POSTED AT 11:40 AM
Mueller identified ‘numerous’ Trump campaign-Russia contacts, but the evidence did not rise to the level of a crime.
Vol. I, Page 9: While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges. Among other things, the evidence was not sufficient to charge any Campaign official as an unregistered agent of the Russian government or other Russian principal. And our evidence about the June 9, 2016 meeting and WikiLeak’s release of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge a criminal campaign-finance violation.
Mr. Barr repeatedly said that the president’s campaign did not collude with Russia. Mr. Mueller’s report offers a more nuanced definition. He writes that while there was ample evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia as it carried out its social media influence and hacking campaigns, the evidence was not strong enough to support bringing criminal charges. —Nicholas Fandos
POSTED AT 11:38 AM
George Papadopoulos suggested that Russia wanted to coordinate with Trump campaign.
Vol I. Page 89: Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Trump campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.
It has long been known that Mr. Papadopoulos, a young campaign aide, was told that the Russian government had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton. This goes much farther, and helps explain why the F.B.I. investigated members of the Trump campaign in 2016. Mr. Papadopoulos appeared to suggest an explicit offer by the Russian government to work with the Trump campaign to sabotage Mrs. Clinton.
— Matt Apuzzo
POSTED AT 11:23 AM
To find evidence of coordination, both Russia and the Trump campaign would have had to agree to act.
Vol. I, Page 2: An agreement “requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to other’s actions or interests.”
It was not enough for investigators simply to show the Trump campaign knew what the Russians were up to, and responded. Trump associates had to specifically agree with the Russians to violate the law.
— Sharon LaFraniere
POSTED AT 11:19 AM
Mr. Trump likely fired James B. Comey for refusing to clear the president’s name.
Vol. II, Page 75: Substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst for the president’s decision to fire Comey was Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation, despite the president’s repeated requests that Comey make such an announcement.
Mr. Mueller effectively finds that the White House’s initial explanation for the firing was untrue. White House officials said that Mr. Comey was dismissed over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. The administration’s ever-changing justification for that firing led to speculation that Mr. Trump had fired him to sabotage the Russia investigation.
Notre Dame fire: Paris cathedral devastated by ferocious blaze.
Fire brought under control on Tuesday but spire of centuries-old landmark destroyed after flames burst through the roof
Notre-Dame cathedral, the symbol of the beauty and history of Paris, was scarred by an extensive fire on Monday evening that caused its delicate spire to collapse, bruised the Parisian skies with smoke and further disheartened a city already back on its heels after weeks of violent protests.
The spectacle of flames leaping from the cathedral’s wooden roof — its spire glowing red then turning into a virtual cinder — stunned thousands of onlookers who gathered along the banks of the Seine and packed into the plaza of the nearby Hôtel de Ville, gasping and covering their mouths in horror and wiping away tears.
“The worst has been avoided even though the battle is not completely won,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a brief and solemn speech at Notre-Dame on Monday night, vowing that the cathedral would be rebuilt.
An investigation has been opened by the prosecutor’s office, but police said it began accidentally and may be linked to building work at the cathedral. The 850-year-old gothic masterpiece had been undergoing restoration work.
