WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The conversation between Don McGahn, the president’s White House counsel, and Sessions took place on the president’s orders and occurred just before the attorney general announced that he would step aside from the ongoing inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the interaction. Two other people confirmed details of the conversation between McGahn and Sessions.
All three people spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to avoid publicly discussing an ongoing investigation.
The episode is known to special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and is likely of interest to them as they look into whether Trump’s actions as president, including the May firing of FBI Director James Comey, amount to improper efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation. Investigators recently concluded a round of interviews with current and former White House officials, including McGahn and former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
The New York Times first reported that Trump had McGahn lobby Sessions against a recusal.
Reached Thursday evening, Trump personal attorney John Dowd said, “I know nothing about that,” and hung up. Jay Sekulow, another of the president’s personal lawyers, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sessions announced on March 2 that he would recuse himself from the Russia probe. He said at the time that he should not oversee any investigation into a campaign for which he was an active and vocal supporter, though the recusal also followed the revelation that he had had two previously undisclosed interactions during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States. At his Jan. 10 confirmation hearing, he had said he had no meetings with Russians.
But soon before the announcement, with White House officials anticipating that Sessions might be poised to step aside, McGahn spoke to Sessions by phone and urged him against recusing himself from the investigation.
During the conversation, according to people familiar with the matter, McGahn argued to Sessions that there was no reason or basis at that time for him to recuse. One person said McGahn also told him that recusal would do nothing to resolve concerns over whether Sessions had given a misleading answer at his confirmation hearing.
Sessions ultimately declined the urging, and McGahn ultimately accepted the conclusion of officials who believed that Sessions should recuse.
Sessions’ recusal left Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in charge of the Russia investigation. But once Trump fired Comey two months later, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, the former FBI director, to run the investigation and to report to him.
Four people, including Trump’s former campaign chairman and national security adviser, have been charged so far in the investigation.
The Sessions recusal has been a sore spot for Trump for months, with the president publicly deriding the decision and lamenting his selection of the former Alabama senator as his attorney general.
In a July interview with The Times, Trump said, “Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.”
So.Much.Obstruction.Of.Justice.
“likely of interest” = understatement.
This is extremely bad, and goes a long way to nailing down the case for another Obstruction charge. Telling McGahn to stop Sessions from recusing himself regarding the Russian investigations because he needs Sessions to “protect” him? It really doesn’t get much clearer than that. Well, besides going on the air in a national televised interview and saying you fired the FBI Director because he was investigating you…but who would do something THAT stupid??
There is also a big problem concerning Dhillion, who, according to the same report, was trying to withhold information from Trump about whether or not Trump could fire Comey. VERY problematic, and pretty much guarantees that he gets a spot at the interview table with Mueller.
Both cases are also extremely troubling for a legal ethics standpoint. McGahn has an obligation to inform his client, the President, that the AG does not in fact exist to protect the President. But McGahn didn’t. Instead he went and held a highly unethical meeting to attempt to pressure Sessions into not recusing himself, after Sessions perjured himself before Congress(the first time, He has perjured himself several times by now).
Dhillion’s ethical problem is on the other end of the spectrum, but is no less troubling. He too has an obligation to give his client all possible legal alternatives. Purposefully withholding pertinent information in an attempt to stop his client from taking one of those alternatives (firing Comey) is a big no no.
Also note that neither of them have either executive privilege or attorney/client privilege with regards to these conversations and actions.
Not “fake news,” especially if there are two people willing to verify that this happened. As usual, it’s not normal, it’s not ethical and it can’t be allowed to continue. We truly have a lawless person sitting in the White House, and we have to hope that Mueller returns more indictments and that the enablers in Congress actually do their jobs. It’s a steep climb, but the preponderance of the evidence is overwhelming. Collusion? Probably. Obstruction of justice? Unquestionably.
This shows how utterly clueless trump is about the ethics of the legal profession. And his cluelessness of how government works. I suspect he’s not learned a damned thing from this.
Hopefully Mueller has interviewed that lawyer. He should also testify in public before the appropriate committees of Congress (for pop corn purposes).