#Rod Rosenstein deputy AG

[malenipshadows]

  *** But in meetings with law enforcement officials in the chaotic days immediately after Mr. Comey’s dismissal, and in subsequent conversations with colleagues and friends, Mr. Rosenstein appeared conflicted, according to the four people.    He alternately defended his involvement, expressed remorse at the tumult it unleashed, said the White House had manipulated him, fumed how the news media had portrayed the events and said the full story would vindicate him, said the people, who in recent weeks described the previously undisclosed episodes. ***

[unclesamsmisguidedclub]

Chaos in DC -Deputy AG Rosenstein Resigns? Or Not?

Chaos in DC -Deputy AG Rosenstein Resigns? Or Not?

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein said he expected to be fired on Monday after the explosive New York Times  report that he suggested that a wire be used to tape the President in order to have him removed under the 25th Amendment. But Monday morning, news media across the spectrum reported him offering his resignation to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Other media angencies reported that he has NOT…

[justsomeantifas]

The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all illegal immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.

But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.

“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”

Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Rosenstein “instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”

The Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind the policy that spurred the separation of thousands of families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the United States, before Mr. Trump abandoned it amid global outrage, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general.

The separation of migrant children from their parents, sometimes for months, was at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on immigration. But the fierce backlash when the administration struggled to reunite the children turned it into one of the biggest policy debacles of the president’s term.

Though Mr. Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, allowing Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Department officials to largely be blamed, he and other top law enforcement officials understood that “zero tolerance” meant that migrant families would be separated and wanted that to happen because they believed it would deter future illegal immigration, Mr. Horowitz wrote.

“The department’s single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations,” the draft report said.

The draft report, citing more than 45 interviews with key officials, emails and other documents, provides the most complete look at the discussions inside the Justice Department as the family separation policy was developed, pushed and ultimately carried out with little concern for children.

This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly, cautioned that the final report could change.

Before publishing the findings of its investigations, the inspector general’s office typically provides draft copies to Justice Department leaders and others mentioned in the reports to ensure that they are accurate.

Mr. Horowitz had been preparing to release his report since late summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation, though the process allowing for responses from current and former department officials whose conduct is under scrutiny is likely to delay its release until after the presidential election.

Mr. Sessions refused to be interviewed, the report noted. Mr. Rosenstein, who is now a lawyer in private practice, defended himself in his interview with investigators in response to questioning about his role, according to two of the officials. Mr. Rosenstein’s former office submitted a 64-page response to the report.

“If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.”

Gene Hamilton, a top lawyer and ally of Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s assault on immigration, argued in a 32-page response that Justice Department officials merely took direction from the president. Mr. Hamilton cited an April 3, 2018, meeting with Mr. Sessions; the homeland security secretary at the time, Kirstjen Nielsen; and others in which the president “ranted” and was on “a tirade,” demanding as many prosecutions as possible.

Mr. Hamilton declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Horowitz’s office. Mr. Sessions did not respond to requests for comment. Alexa Vance, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, disputed the draft report and said the Homeland Security Department referred cases for prosecution.

“The draft report relied on for this article contains numerous factual errors and inaccuracies,” she said. “While D.O.J. is responsible for the prosecutions of defendants, it had no role in tracking or providing custodial care to the children of defendants. Finally, both the timing and misleading content of this leak raise troubling questions about the motivations of those responsible for it.”

The draft report also documented other revelations that had not previously been known:

Government prosecutors reacted with alarm at the separation of children from their parents during a secret 2017 pilot program along the Mexican border in Texas. “We have now heard of us taking breastfeeding defendant moms away from their infants,” one government prosecutor wrote to his superiors. “I did not believe this until I looked at the duty log.”

Border Patrol officers missed serious felony cases because they were stretched too thin by the zero-tolerance policy requiring them to detain and prosecute all of the misdemeanor illegal entry cases. One Texas prosecutor warned top Justice Department officials in 2018 that “sex offenders were released” as a result.

Senior Justice Department officials viewed the welfare of the children as the responsibility of other agencies and their duty as tracking the parents. “I just don’t see that as a D.O.J. equity,” Mr. Rosenstein told the inspector general.

The failure to inform the U.S. Marshals Service before announcing the zero-tolerance policy led to serious overcrowding and budget overruns. The marshals were forced to cut back on serving warrants in other cases, saying that “when you take away manpower, you can’t make a safe arrest.”

For two years, Ms. Nielsen has taken the brunt of the public criticism for separating migrant families because of her decision to refer adults crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution. A day after the president’s retreat, Mr. Sessions distanced his department from the decision, telling CBN News that “we never really intended” to separate children.

That was false, according to the draft report. It made clear that from the policy’s earliest days in a five-month test along the border in Texas, Justice Department officials understood — and encouraged — the separation of children as an expected part of the desire to prosecute all illegal border crossers.

“It is the hope that this separation will act as a deterrent to parents bringing their children into the harsh circumstances that are present when trying to enter the United States illegally,” a Border Patrol official wrote on Oct. 28, 2017, to the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, according to the draft report.

After the pilot program in Texas ended, the report asserted, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Rosenstein pushed aggressively to expand the practice across the entire southwestern border, with help from prosecutors.

In a briefing two days after Christmas in 2017, top Justice Department officials asked Mr. Bash for statistics from the pilot program, conducted by his predecessor, that could be used to develop “nationwide prosecution guidelines.” Mr. Bash, a former White House adviser, did not receive a follow-up request for the information. Thinking that the idea had been abandoned, he did not provide it.

By April 2018, Mr. Sessions nevertheless moved to enact the zero-tolerance policy across the entire border with Mexico. Mr. Rosenstein told the inspector general that Mr. Sessions “understood what the consequences were.”

“The A.G.’s goal,” he said, “was to create a more effective deterrent so that everybody would believe that they had a risk of being prosecuted.”

But the Justice Department still needed to persuade Ms. Nielsen to refer all families for prosecution, which she had been resisting. The draft report says a pressure campaign culminated in a May 3 meeting in which Mr. Sessions insisted that Customs and Border Protection begin referring all of those cases to prosecutors.

A note from Mr. Hamilton to Mr. Sessions before the meeting indicated: “You should lead this discussion.”

“We must vigorously enforce our criminal immigration laws to ensure that there are consequences for illegal actions and to deter future illegal immigration,” Mr. Sessions planned to say, according to the draft report. “That means that an illegal alien should not get a free pass just because he or she crosses the border illegally with a child.”

When the group voted by a show of hands to proceed, Ms. Nielsen was the only one who kept her hand down, according to two people familiar with the vote, which was reported earlier by NBC News. The next day, Ms. Nielsen backed down, signing a memo referring all adults for prosecution and clearing the way for the children to be separated.

The decision roiled the prosecutors along the border. In Arizona, Elizabeth Strange, the acting U.S. attorney, led a minor rebellion, temporarily declining six cases, citing concern about the children. That prompted a rebuke from top Justice Department officials, who demanded to know “why would they be declining these cases?”

Justice Department officials have repeatedly claimed that they thought the adults would be prosecuted and reunited with their children within hours of being separated. But the inspector general found a memo informing top officials that sentences for adults ranged from three to 14 days, making it all but certain that children would be sent to the custody of officials at the Health and Human Services Department for long periods of time.

“We found no evidence, before or after receipt of the memorandum, that D.O.J. leaders sought to expedite the process for completing sentencing in order to facilitate reunification of separated families,” the inspector general wrote.

Over all, Mr. Horowitz concluded in the draft, Mr. Sessions and other senior department officials “were aware that full implementation of the zero-tolerance policy would result in criminal referrals by D.H.S. of adults who enter the country illegally with children and that the prosecution of these family-unit adults would result in children being separated from families.”

[crash-c2]

2 Years Ago from the RollerCoaster...Follow the Facts... Read Between The Intentional MSM Distortion Tactics... They Don’t Want You to Understand. Comprehension once absorbed leads to an Awakening and Informed Resistance and if We Did Not Have Trump, The Patriots Behind Him and a very sophisticated well planned tactical dissemination ... We would be in Full Revolt...🏴‍☠️

We know German bank records prove the fake Russian dossier was paid for by funding from the DNC and Hillary campaign. The funding went through the law firm of Perkins-Coie and managing partner Marc Elias to Fusion GPS and on to Christopher Steele. Russian and British Intelligence were feeding Steele disinformation. There were reporters on the DNC and Hillary campaign payroll who was revealed in the recent FISA application.

We know that the Senate Intelligence Committee (filled with corruption) leaked classified information to the media. We know the top security person on the Committee was having an affair with a New York Times reporter.

We know John McCain was a bag man for distributing the phony dossier.

We know that the dossier and Yahoo News story plus a letter from Harry Reid that originated from the dossier were the basis of all the FISA warrant applications.

We know the FBI paid Steele directly also, in addition to what he got from Fusion.

We know FBI guy Strzok told his girlfriend he would stop Trump. We know that Strzok's father was an Iranian sympathizer and Strzok was raised in Iran and trained by the CIA.

We know the dossier was unverified, not obtained through U.S. intelligence activities, and paid for by the DNC and Hillary campaign. We know neither fact was disclosed to the Court or to Trump as a candidate, as President-elect, or as President. The release of the FISA application proves the FISA Judge was not told this before he approved the warrant to spy on Trump and his associates based on the phony dossier.

We know that the Michael Isikoff story on Yahoo News which was used as partial justification for the warrants was leaked to Isikoff by Chris Steele directly.

We know that Strzok and Page spoke of an insurance policy in case Trump was elected, and they spoke of it in Andrew McCabe's office. Many believe the insurance policy was the Mueller investigation.

We know that James Clapper testified that Obama personally called for a counter-intelligence investigation into Trump.

We know the warrants also named George Papadopoulos and the Trump Campaign in addition to Carter Page. We know that when Trump said that Obama was surveilling him at Trump Tower and the media laughed, that he was being surveilled.

We know that Susan Rice and Samantha Power unmasked over a hundred people recorded in the surveillance.

We know that Lisa Page texted to Peter Strzok that "POTUS wants to know everything we're doing."

We know Obama knew all about Russian meddling, Trump had no idea, and Team Obama did nothing to stop it or tell anyone.

We know Comey pre-exonerated Hillary and granted immunity to five senior advisers and two IT staff who wiped her server.

We know Obama wrote to Hillary on her private server using an alias even though he claimed not to know about it.

We know the DNC via Bob Creamer staged every act of violence at Trump rallies.

We know the DNC rigged and stole the primary from Bernie for Hillary.

We know there was a shredding party at Obama's State Department one weekend.

We know Comey leaked his classified notes to the New York Times.

We know that Comey did not tell Trump the truth about the dossier.

We know that the warrants were renewed multiple times without any updated information (i.e. surveillance yielded nothing).

We know McCabe leaked and lied about it and that he was compromised by the large donation from Hillary bagman Terry McAuliffe to his wife's Democratic Virginia Senate campaign.

We know that Carter Page is not a spy as he was never charged and the surveillance ended.

We know Lynch and Bill Clinton met inappropriately in Phoenix two days before Comey exonerated Hillary. We know Lynch was lying when she said she did not know what Comey was going to say before he said it.

We know Lynch personally issued an extraordinary visa waiver to Putin Stoogette Natalia Veselnitskaya after she was denied a visa in Moscow so she could get in to attend the staged meeting at Trump Tower with the President's son and son-in-law. And that shortly thereafter she was a front-row guest at a Congressional hearing, sitting next to Obama's Ambassador to Russia.

We know piles of cash flowed to the Clintons after the sale of Uranium One. We know Bob Mueller had uncovered massive Russian corruption with regard to U. S. uranium BEFORE the sale, that Eric Holder knew about it and signed off anyway, and that the Maryland prosecutor who sat on the charges until the sale was complete was Rod Rosenstein.

We know that President Trump asked Rod Rosenstein to be Deputy AG. We know Robert Mueller met with President Trump after he fired Comey. After Sessions recused himself, Rosenstein was in charge of the Mueller investigation.

We know that George Papadopoulos was baited and hooked by Alexander Downer, and invited to London to allow Downer to get him drunk and report it to the FBI, which is why Papadopoulos was named in the warrants, and that Downer had just overseen the Australian $11M donation to the Clinton Foundation.

We know Peter Strzok was personal friends with Judge Rudy Contreras, a FISA judge and the one who accepted the Flynn plea before he was recused without explanation. We know Lisa Page planned a fake dinner party so Peter and Rudy could talk without arousing suspicion.

We know Brennan and Clapper were part and parcel of the whole thing. Clapper's starting to blame Obama now and calls him the kingpin behind the investigation.

We know that a former CIA pit bull who worked for HW Bush and went to school with Bill Clinton was an FBI informant, hired by Obama, to spy on the Trump campaign.

We know that Stzok's wife got a promotion at the SEC.

We know Rod Rosenstein's wife is a Clinton attorney.

We know dozens of wealthy Silicon Valley and Never Trumpers like Ryan, McConnell, and Graham met at Sea Island in March 2016 to stop Trump. They failed.

[wtffundiefamilies]

The “Godly” administration our nation will fall apart without.

WASHINGTON — The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.

But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.

“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”

Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Bash had declined the cases, but Mr. Rosenstein had overruled him. “Per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”

The Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind the policy that spurred the separation of thousands of families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the United States, before Mr. Trump abandoned it amid global outrage, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general.

The separation of migrant children from their parents, sometimes for months, was at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on immigration. But the fierce backlash when the administration struggled to reunite the children turned it into one of the biggest policy debacles of the president’s term.

Though Mr. Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, allowing Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Department officials to largely be blamed, he and other top law enforcement officials understood that “zero tolerance” meant that migrant families would be separated and wanted that to happen because they believed it would deter future illegal immigration, Mr. Horowitz wrote.

“The department’s single-minded focus on increasing prosecutions came at the expense of careful and effective implementation of the policy, especially with regard to prosecution of family-unit adults and the resulting child separations,” the draft report said.

The draft report, citing more than 45 interviews with key officials, emails and other documents, provides the most complete look at the discussions inside the Justice Department as the family separation policy was developed, pushed and ultimately carried out with little concern for children.

This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly, cautioned that the final report could change.

Before publishing the findings of its investigations, the inspector general’s office typically provides draft copies to Justice Department leaders and others mentioned in the reports to ensure that they are accurate.

Mr. Horowitz had been preparing to release his report since late summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation, though the process allowing for responses from current and former department officials whose conduct is under scrutiny is likely to delay its release until after the presidential election.

Mr. Sessions refused to be interviewed, the report noted. Mr. Rosenstein, who is now a lawyer in private practice, defended himself in his interview with investigators in response to questioning about his role, according to two of the officials. Mr. Rosenstein’s former office submitted a 64-page response to the report.

“If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.”

Gene Hamilton, a top lawyer and ally of Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s assault on immigration, argued in a 32-page response that Justice Department officials merely took direction from the president. Mr. Hamilton cited an April 3, 2018, meeting with Mr. Sessions; the homeland security secretary at the time, Kirstjen Nielsen; and others in which the president “ranted” and was on “a tirade,” demanding as many prosecutions as possible.

Mr. Hamilton declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Horowitz’s office. Mr. Sessions did not respond to requests for comment. Alexa Vance, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, disputed the draft report and said the Homeland Security Department referred cases for prosecution.

“The draft report relied on for this article contains numerous factual errors and inaccuracies,” she said. “While D.O.J. is responsible for the prosecutions of defendants, it had no role in tracking or providing custodial care to the children of defendants. Finally, both the timing and misleading content of this leak raise troubling questions about the motivations of those responsible for it.”

The draft report also documented other revelations that had not previously been known:

Government prosecutors reacted with alarm at the separation of children from their parents during a secret 2017 pilot program along the Mexican border in Texas. “We have now heard of us taking breastfeeding defendant moms away from their infants,” one government prosecutor wrote to his superiors. “I did not believe this until I looked at the duty log.”

Border Patrol officers missed serious felony cases because they were stretched too thin by the zero-tolerance policy requiring them to detain and prosecute all of the misdemeanor illegal entry cases. One Texas prosecutor warned top Justice Department officials in 2018 that “sex offenders were released” as a result.

Senior Justice Department officials viewed the welfare of the children as the responsibility of other agencies and their duty as tracking the parents. “I just don’t see that as a D.O.J. equity,” Mr. Rosenstein told the inspector general.

The failure to inform the U.S. Marshals Service before announcing the zero-tolerance policy led to serious overcrowding and budget overruns. The marshals were forced to cut back on serving warrants in other cases, saying that “when you take away manpower, you can’t make a safe arrest.”

For two years, Ms. Nielsen has taken the brunt of the public criticism for separating migrant families because of her decision to refer adults crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution. A day after the president’s retreat, Mr. Sessions distanced his department from the decision, telling CBN News that “we never really intended” to separate children.

That was false, according to the draft report. It made clear that from the policy’s earliest days in a five-month test along the border in Texas, Justice Department officials understood — and encouraged — the separation of children as an expected part of the desire to prosecute all undocumented border crossers.

“It is the hope that this separation will act as a deterrent to parents bringing their children into the harsh circumstances that are present when trying to enter the United States illegally,” a Border Patrol official wrote on Oct. 28, 2017, to the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, according to the draft report.

After the pilot program in Texas ended, the report asserted, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Rosenstein pushed aggressively to expand the practice across the entire southwestern border, with help from prosecutors.

In a briefing two days after Christmas in 2017, top Justice Department officials asked Mr. Bash for statistics from the pilot program, conducted by his predecessor, that could be used to develop “nationwide prosecution guidelines.” Mr. Bash, a former White House adviser, did not receive a follow-up request for the information. Thinking that the idea had been abandoned, he did not provide it.

By April 2018, Mr. Sessions nevertheless moved to enact the zero-tolerance policy across the entire border with Mexico. Mr. Rosenstein told the inspector general that Mr. Sessions “understood what the consequences were.”

“The A.G.’s goal,” he said, “was to create a more effective deterrent so that everybody would believe that they had a risk of being prosecuted.”

But the Justice Department still needed to persuade Ms. Nielsen to refer all families for prosecution, which she had been resisting. The draft report says a pressure campaign culminated in a May 3 meeting in which Mr. Sessions insisted that Customs and Border Protection begin referring all of those cases to prosecutors.

A note from Mr. Hamilton to Mr. Sessions before the meeting indicated: “You should lead this discussion.”

“We must vigorously enforce our criminal immigration laws to ensure that there are consequences for illegal actions and to deter future illegal immigration,” Mr. Sessions planned to say, according to the draft report. “That means that an illegal alien should not get a free pass just because he or she crosses the border illegally with a child.”

When the group voted by a show of hands to proceed, Ms. Nielsen was the only one who kept her hand down, according to two people familiar with the vote, which was reported earlier by NBC News. The next day, Ms. Nielsen backed down, signing a memo referring all adults for prosecution and clearing the way for the children to be separated.

[redhousehead]

Open SmartNews and read ‘We need to take away children’: Bombshell report alleges former AG Jeff Sessions and ex-deputy AG Rod Rosenstein were aggressively in favor of separating migrant families at the US-Mexico border here: https://smartnews.link/news/7iod

To read it on the web, tap here: https://smartnews.link/w/CPmm

[phroyd]

President Trump wanted Attorney General William P. Barr to hold a news conference declaring that the commander in chief had broken no laws during a phone call in which he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a political rival, though Barr ultimately declined to do so, people familiar with the matter said.

The request from Trump traveled from the president to other White House officials and eventually to the Justice Department. The president has mentioned Barr’s declination to associates in recent weeks, saying he wished Barr would have held the news conference, Trump advisers say.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has sought some distance from the White House, particularly on matters relating to the burgeoning controversy over Trump’s dealings on Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they sparked.

People close to the administration say Barr and Trump remain on good terms. A senior administration official said Trump praised the attorney general publicly and privately Wednesday, and deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement: “The President has nothing but respect for AG Barr and greatly appreciates the work he’s done on behalf of the country — and no amount of shady sources with clear intent to divide, smear, and slander will change that.”

But those close to the administration also concede that the department has made several recent maneuvers putting it at odds with the White House at a particularly precarious time for the president. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically fraught situation.

The request for the news conference came sometime around Sept. 25, when the administration released a rough transcript of the president’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The document showed that Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter — while dangling a possible White House visit for the foreign leader.

By then, a whistleblower complaint about the call had moved congressional Democrats to launch the impeachment inquiry, and the administration was on the defensive. As the rough transcript was released, a Justice Department spokeswoman said officials had evaluated it and the whistleblower complaint to see whether campaign finance laws had been broken, determined that none had been and decided “no further action was warranted.”

It was not immediately clear why Barr would not go beyond that statement with a televised assertion that the president broke no laws, nor was it clear how forcefully the president’s desire was communicated. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. A senior administration official said, “The DOJ did in fact release a statement about the call, and the claim that it resulted in tension because it wasn’t a news conference is completely false.”

From the moment the administration released the rough transcript, Barr made clear that whatever the president was up to, he was not a party to it.

Though the rough transcript shows Trump offering Zelensky the services of his attorney general to aid investigations of Biden and his son, a Barr spokeswoman said that Barr and Trump had never discussed that.

“The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former vice president Biden or his son,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement released at the same time as the rough transcript. “The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter. The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject.”

It would not be the last time the Justice Department would have to distance itself from the White House on a matter relevant to the impeachment inquiry. After acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said at a televised briefing last month that Ukraine’s cooperation in the investigations Trump wanted was tied to hundreds of millions of dollars of aid that the United States had withheld from Kyiv, a Justice Department official quickly made clear to reporters that the department did not endorse that position.

“If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us,” the official said.

The department — and Barr in particular — has similarly sought separation from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was leading the effort to investigate the Bidens.

In addition to asserting that Barr and Trump had never discussed investigating the Bidens, Kupec said in her statement that the attorney general had not “discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.” Barr’s allies had previously confided to reporters that the attorney general was unhappy with Giuliani, particularly over his going outside of normal channels to pursue investigations of interest to the president.

Last month, after the department arrested two Giuliani associates who had worked on investigating the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine, the New York Times reported that Giuliani had participated in a meeting about a separate case with Brian A. Benczkowski, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and lawyers in the department’s fraud section.

The day after that report, the department issued an unusual statement saying those in the meeting were unaware of the case that led to charges against Giuliani’s associates for alleged campaign finance violations. Giuliani also is being investigated as a part of the case, though he has said he has not been told of that.

“When Mr. Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers met with Mr. Giuliani, they were not aware of any investigation of Mr. Giuliani’s associates in the Southern District of New York and would not have met with him had they known,” Peter Carr, a department spokesman, told the Times.

People close to Barr assert that while Barr is a strong believer in the power of the presidency, he has always recognized there might be times when he has to preserve the Justice Department’s independence.

“My take is that Barr hasn’t changed one bit, that he has had a healthy distance from the beginning,” one person close to the administration said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe Barr’s relationship with Trump. “He knows the parameters of the relationship between a president and an AG.”

Trump had a famously dysfunctional relationship with his first Senate-confirmed attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The president blamed Sessions for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into whether his campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election because — in the president’s view — Sessions’s recusal from that case allowed for Mueller’s appointment and everything that followed. Mueller, though, was appointed by the deputy attorney general at the time, Rod J. Rosenstein, weeks after Sessions recused himself.

Trump publicly and privately attacked Sessions for virtually Sessions’s entire tenure in the top law enforcement job and toyed constantly with firing him. He finally did so after the 2018 midterm elections and nominated Barr as his permanent replacement. His resentment lingers to this day, as Sessions is expected to announce a run for his old Senate seat.

Though Barr was a relative outsider to Trumpworld when the president picked him as attorney general, he quickly won the president’s affection. In announcing Mueller’s principal conclusions — before Mueller’s final report had been issued — Barr declared that the special counsel had found insufficient evidence to allege coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. And while Mueller had not reached a determination on whether the president had obstructed justice, Barr said he had reviewed the case himself and determined Trump had not.

Barr’s descriptions so agitated Mueller that the special counsel sent a letter to the attorney general complaining that Barr “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the special counsel’s work. Barr ultimately would release Mueller’s final report — which painted a far more damning picture for Trump — but even as he did so, he held a news conference and endorsed one of the president’s famed talking points.

“As he said from the beginning,” Barr declared, referring to Trump, “there was, in fact, no collusion.”

Detractors have criticized the attorney general as eroding the Justice Department’s independence, though Trump has generally been pleased. Most recently, allies say he has been heartened as Barr has sought to investigate those involved in the Russia case, tapping U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead an inquiry into the origins of the Mueller investigation and whether the U.S. government’s “intelligence collection activities” related to the Trump campaign were “lawful and appropriate.”

On Ukraine, though, the White House and Justice Department have been somewhat out of sync.

Some time after The Washington Post began reporting on the nature of the whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s phone call, the Justice Department pushed to release the rough transcript. Leaders there believed — perhaps misguidedly — that doing so could quell the budding controversy, because in his conversation with Zelensky, Trump did not explicitly push for a quid pro quo tying U.S. aid for Ukraine to the politically beneficial investigations he sought. The White House was initially resistant.

The Justice Department had not always been on the side of full transparency, blocking transmission of the whistleblower complaint to Congress — even though the intelligence community inspector general felt the law required it to be handed over. Unbeknown to the public, the department weighed whether to investigate a potential campaign finance crime, though ultimately concluded there was not sufficient basis to do so after an inquiry limited essentially to reviewing the rough transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call.

Though Barr did not hold a news conference clearing Trump of any wrongdoing, the Justice Department did issue its statement saying it would not investigate the matter — at least for campaign finance violations. While that was a partial win for Trump, it has allowed Congress to expedite its impeachment inquiry without fear of impeding law enforcement — and make public unflattering testimony about the president and his allies’ dealings in Ukraine.

Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

What’s happening now: Lawmakers are conducting an inquiry, which could lead to impeachment. An impeachment would mean the U.S. House thinks the president is no longer fit to serve and should be removed from office. 

What’s happening next: The House will hold public impeachment hearings, beginning on November 13. House committees conducting the investigation have already held closed-door hearings and subpoenaed documents from dozens of witnesses relating to the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Phroyd

[npr]

Andrew McCabe, the former acting director of the FBI, says President Trump's treatment of the bureau and its probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was so profoundly disturbing during the spring of 2017 that Justice Department officials discussed contacting Cabinet members to initiate Trump's removal from office under the 25th Amendment.

That remarkable statement comes from the man who took over when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. But it is only the beginning of McCabe's revelations about the relationship between the nation's leading law enforcement agency and the 45th president.

The tension in that relationship is palpable even in the title of McCabe's memoir, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. The publication date is Feb. 19, but the most explosive assertions burst into the news Thursday when CBS aired portions of its upcoming interview with McCabe (set to air Sunday on 60 Minutes).

That interview includes specific statements from McCabe regarding the 25th Amendment discussions and confirmation that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein once speculated about "wearing a wire" to record a conversation with Trump without the president's knowledge.

McCabe's 'The Threat' May Be Darkest Vision Of Trump Presidency Yet

Photo: Amr Alfiky/NPR

[bountyofbeads]

🚨 🚨BREAKING NEWS ALERT 🚨 🚨

Prosecutors quit amid escalating Justice Dept. fight over Roger Stone’s prison term

By Matt Zapotosky, Devlin Barrett, Ann E. Marimow and Spencer S. Hsu | Published February 11 at 4:52 PM EST |

Washington Post | Posted Feb 11, 2020|

Two career prosecutors who handled the case against Roger Stone, a confidant of President Trump, resigned their posts Tuesday after the Justice Department signaled it planned to reduce their sentencing recommendation for the president’s friend, and a third asked to withdraw from the legal proceedings.

Jonathan Kravis, one of the prosecutors, wrote in a court filing he had resigned as an assistant U.S. attorney, leaving government entirely. Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, a former member of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, said he was quitting his special assignment to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute Stone, though a spokeswoman said he will remain an assistant U.S. attorney in Baltimore.

Adam Jed, also a former member of Mueller’s team, asked a judge’s permission to leave the case like the others, though gave no indication of resigning his job.

None provided a reason for their decisions.

The departures come just hours after a senior Justice Department official told reporters that the agency’s leadership had been “shocked” by the seven-to-nine-year penalty prosecutors, including Zelinsky, asked a judge to impose on Stone and intended to ask for a lesser penalty.

“That recommendation is not what had been briefed to the department,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case. “The department finds the recommendation extreme and excessive and disproportionate to Stone’s offenses. The department will clarify its position later today.”

Through a spokeswoman, Zelinsky declined to comment. Jed also declined to comment. Kravis could not immediately be reached.

The department’s decision to overrule frontline prosecutors and the prosecutors’ subsequent moves laid bare the tension — between career prosecutors and department leadership — that has roiled the Stone case in recent days, and it raises fresh concerns about the politicization of Trump’s Justice Department.

The Justice Department’s statement came hours after Trump tweeted about the sentence prosecutors recommended, saying: “This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the White House did not communicate with the agency on Monday or Tuesday, and that the decision to reverse course was made before Trump’s tweet.

Stone was convicted by a jury in November of obstructing Congress and witness tampering. His was the last conviction secured by Mueller as part of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Stone has been a friend and adviser to Trump since the 1980s and was a key figure in his 2016 campaign, working to discover damaging information on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

Former Justice Department officials and those on the political left asserted the department’s abrupt shift on Stone was an egregious example of the president and his attorney general bending federal law enforcement to serve their political interests.

David Laufman, a former Justice Department official, called it a “shocking, cram-down political intervention” in the criminal justice process.

“We are now truly at a break-glass-in-case-of-fire moment for the Justice Dept.,” he wrote on Twitter.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) said the move amounted to “obstruction of justice.”

“We are seeing a full-frontal assault on the rule of law in America,” Pascrell said. “Direct political interference in our justice system is a hallmark of a banana republic. Despite whatever Trump, William Barr, and their helpers think, the United States is a nation of laws and not an authoritarian’s paradise.”

Attorney General William P. Barr has previously faced criticism for seeking to protect Trump and undercut the special counsel’s work.

In perhaps the most notable instance, he sent Congress a letter before public release of the special counsel’s report, describing what he called the investigation’s principal conclusions. Mueller, Barr wrote, did not find that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election, and reached no conclusion on whether Trump had sought to obstruct justice. Barr wrote that he and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein reviewed the matter and concluded there was insufficient evidence to make an obstruction case.

The bare-bones description so infuriated the special counsel’s team that Mueller wrote to Barr complaining that the attorney general’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the Russia probe. Barr, though, repeated his description at a news conference before Mueller’s full report was released, drawing criticism that he was trying to shape public opinion in a way favorable to Trump.

Mueller closed his office in May, though some members of his team stayed on special assignments to D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office to handle cases — including Stone’s — that were not resolved. People familiar with the matter say there was tension between them and their supervisors on what penalty to recommend.

As Monday’s court deadline neared for prosecutors to give a sentencing recommendation, it was still unclear what the office would do, after days of tense internal debates on the subject, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Front-line prosecutors, some previously from Mueller’s team, argued for a prison sentence on the higher end, while their bosses wanted to calculate the guidelines differently to get to a lower sentence. The debate centered around whether they should seek more prison time for obstruction that impedes the administration of justice, these people said.

In the end, the office filed a recommendation keeping with the line prosecutors’ goals, and rejecting the lighter recommendation sought by their superiors, the people said.

Hours before the filing was due Monday, the new head of the D.C. office, interim U.S. attorney Timothy Shea — a former close adviser to Barr — had not made a final decision on Stone’s sentencing recommendation, they said.

It was not clear what was told to Barr or other Justice Department leaders about the final recommendation. The senior official said they were led to believe it would be lighter than what was ultimately filed. But some legal observers were skeptical.

Mary McCord, a former prosecutor and acting assistant attorney general for the department’s National Security Division, said decisions related to the sentencing of such high-profile political figures would not be made without initial consultation between a U.S. attorney’s office and Justice Department headquarters, and that it was is hard to imagine the department was truly taken aback.

“There is no way you can come away from this with anything other than an impression that Justice is taking its orders from the president and pandering to the president,” said McCord, who was also chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. “This is causing lasting and long term damage to the department’s reputation and credibility”

Shea took over as the interim U.S. attorney in D.C. only last month. He succeeded Jessie K. Liu, who stepped down pending a White House nomination to serve as Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes.

While Liu’s nomination was announced Jan. 6, it was somewhat unusual that she departed before a Senate confirmation hearing was scheduled. Moreover, the selection of Shea to replace her was outside the norm, as it bypassed the office’s veteran principal assistant U.S. attorney, Alessio Evangelista. In the past, the principal assistant has often been elevated to serve as interim U.S. attorney.

It can be common for prosecutors to disagree about sentencing recommendations, especially when it comes to politically sensitive cases. It would have been unusual, however, for the U.S. attorney’s office to endorse a sentence below the guideline range after winning conviction at trial, according to former federal prosecutors.

In a 22-page filing, prosecutors Michael J. Marando, Jed, Kravis and Zelinsky wrote that a sentence of 87 to 108 months, “consistent with the applicable advisory Guidelines would accurately reflect the seriousness of [Stone’s] crimes and promote respect for the law.”

Kravis and Marando were part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. Jed and Zelinsky were members of Mueller’s team now on special assignment to the office. Kravis and Zelinsky revealed the resignations in formal requests to withdraw from the Stone case, which still must be approved by a judge. Jed asked to withdraw but gave no indication he was resigning. It was unclear what Marando intended to do.

In the men’s stead, career prosecutor John Crabb, the head of the D.C. office’s criminal division, entered the case.

Stone’s defense on Monday asked for a sentence of probation, citing his age, 67, and lack of criminal history. They also noted that of seven Mueller defendants who have been sentenced, only one faces more than a six-month term: former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is serving 7½ years.

Given the hardships and loss of professional standing suffered by Stone and his family, “No one could seriously contend that a [reduced . . .] sentence would cause anyone to walk away from these proceedings believing that one can commit the offenses at issue here with impunity,” defense attorneys Bruce S. Rogow, Robert C. Buschel and Grant J. Smith wrote.

Federal guidelines typically call for a sentence ranging from 15 to 21 months for first-time offenders convicted of obstruction offenses, such as lying to Congress, making false statements and witness tampering, as Stone was.

The range ratchets up steeply, potentially to more than seven years in prison, if the offense involves other factors such as threatening physical injury or property damage to a witness; substantially interfering with the administration of justice; or the willful obstruction of justice. Each was cited by prosecutors.

A seven- to nine-year term “will send the message that tampering with a witness, obstructing justice, and lying in the context of a congressional investigation on matters of critical national importance are not crimes to be taken lightly,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors in another case brought by the special counsel’s office, against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, also recently walked back a sentencing recommendation — though the move was subtle.

In early January, prosecutors recommended that Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., be sentenced “within the Guidelines range” of zero to six months in prison. But in another filing just weeks later, they made clear they agreed with Flynn “that a sentence of probation is a reasonable.”

Prosecutors did not explain in the later filing why they emphasized probation as a reasonable sentence for Flynn. Both documents were signed by career prosecutors — Brandon L. Van Grack and Jocelyn Ballantine — though Van Grack has not signed some later filings in the case. Flynn is now seeking to withdraw his guilty plea, alleging a variety of government misconduct.

Barr has been critical of the FBI’s 2016 investigation into Trump’s campaign that Mueller ultimately took over. When the Justice Department inspector general found last year that the bureau had adequate cause to open the case, Barr issued a remarkable public statement registering his disagreement. He said the case was initiated “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”

“It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory,” he added.

Barr has tasked the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut with exploring the origins of the case, and current and former law enforcement officials have expressed concern that it might be an effort to undercut an investigation because Trump did not like it.

[feelingbluepolitics]

"The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a dozen new subpoenas targeting a who’s who of witnesses cited in Robert S. Mueller III’s report as Democrats sought to elevate their showdown with [t]rump over episodes of possible obstruction of justice documented by the special counsel.

"The panel also approved a separate group of subpoenas seeking information about the [t]rump administration’s practice of separating children from their families at the border. And House Democratic leaders set Tuesday for a full House vote to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress over their refusal to relinquish documents related to the administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

"Among the prominent figures to be subpoenaed by the Democrats are Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general; Rod J. Rosenstein, his deputy who appointed Mr. Mueller, the special counsel; John F. Kelly, the former White House chief of staff; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser; and Corey Lewandowski, a former [t]rump campaign manager. Democrats also authorized a subpoena for David J. Pecker, who as head of American Media helped [t]rump during the 2016 presidential campaign buy the silence of a pornographic film actress and a former Playboy model, both of whom claimed to have had sexual relationships with him.

..."In addition to Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein, the Mueller-related subpoenas target Michael T. Flynn, [t]rump’s former national security adviser; Jody Hunt, Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff; Rob Porter, a former top White House aide; and Rick A. Dearborn, another former White House official. Mr. Flynn has already been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee.

"The immigration-related subpoenas are part of a Judiciary Committee investigation of the [t]rump administration’s divisive policies at the border. They specifically authorize the committee to demand testimony and documents from current and former administration officials about its so-called zero tolerance policy at the border, the practice of separating migrant families and the standards of detention of migrants.

..."Mr. Nadler said on Thursday that he was pursuing a compulsory process because the Justice Department had failed to meaningfully comply with voluntary requests for the same information; the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments, he added, had largely complied with similar requests."

It's interesting that it is primarily the Department of Justice that has gone rogue, but not surprising. Without a rogue DOJ, others would be required to comply or face consequences from an authentic Justice Department. Understanding this shows how this administration's rot of lawlessness is really just taking hold.

We need stronger provisions of accountability for the DOJ, given its power and its linchpin role. The platitudes uttered by nominees for Attorney General are insufficient when they are Republicons comfortable with being forsworn once in office.

The DOJ is the pivotal nexus of whether we have a democracy...or not.

These are core imperatives for the U.S. DOJ:

-Faithfully enforce the laws of United States, and ensure that enforcement actions are based on the mandates of the law and not partisan interest;

-Reject efforts to pressure state officials, U.S. Attorneys, and other agencies to adopt anti-voter policies or advance a partisan political agenda; [and]

- Uphold the mission of the Department of Justice, including its core mission to protect civil rights and the right of every eligible citizen to vote free from interference and discrimination.

Republicons have consistently proven they are partisan above all; their Republicon agendas both conflict with and take precedence over these fundamental imperatives.

With trump as Corruption in Chief, and a rogue DOJ, and the amped-up conservative-partisan duplicity injected into the federal judiciary from bottom to top, we now must wait to see whether these congressional subpoenas will be effective.

Subpoenas, whether issued by Congress or the courts, derive from the powers created by the Constitution. These fresh subpoenas cover a wide array of people and issues.

If Barr as trump's AG will not acknowledge these subpoenas because he wants to be trump's kingmaker -- the man behind the all-powerful "president's" throne, we will find that out definitively as a result of what happens with these subpoenas.

[marchagainsttrump]

Former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein wondered whether Trump's original draft to fire James Comey could become evidence in an obstruction investigation, and considered walking out of the White House with the letter. He also wondered if he might have unwittingly acted as an accessory to obstruction. - [ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/06/26/timeline-of-deceit-from-trumps-draft-to-rosensteins-cover-story/ ]

[45oldschool-blog]

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved Jeffrey Rosen's nomination for Deputy Attorney General. He is replacing outgoing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein -- who's

having his farewell at the Department of Justice.

[algebraicvarietyshow]

“We keep the faith, we follow the rules, and we always put America first.”

hát jó

[sarcasticcynic]

The Mueller report details over a dozen of Trump’s attempts to obstruct official investigations (which is illegal). Mueller’s own words:

“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. 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.”

Trump’s obstruction efforts largely failed, but that does not render the attempted obstruction any less illegal. Again, Mueller’s own words:

“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests. [Former FBI Director James] Comey did not end the investigation of [Retired Lt. Gen. Michael] Flynn, which ultimately resulted in Flynn’s prosecution and conviction for lying to the FBI. [White House counsel Don] McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the Special Counsel must be removed, but was instead prepared to resign over the President’s order. [Former campaign manager Corey] Lewandowski and [Trump campaign official Rick] Dearborn did not deliver the President’s message to Sessions that he should confine the Russia investigation to future election meddling only. And McGahn refused to recede from his recollections about events surrounding the President’s direction to have the Special Counsel removed, despite the President’s multiple demands that he do so.”

For various reasons, Mueller decided that he would not make the call whether to charge Trump formally with trying to obstruct justice. The mountain of evidence against Trump, however, remains.

Some very specific examples of Trump’s efforts to obstruct investigations, with very specific evidentiary support:

Trump firing Directory James Comey: “Other evidence, however, indicates that the President wanted to protect himself from an investigation into his campaign,’ the report says, citing Trump asking Comey for ‘loyalty’ and Trump saying he should be able to tell the attorney general ‘who to investigate.’ The president ‘had a motive to put the FBI’s Russia investigation behind him,’ the report says, saying that ‘the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.’

Trump’s efforts to limit the scope of the investigation to exclude the 2016 election (and therefore himself): “Two days after Trump had tried to have the special counsel removed, the president dictated a message that he wanted Lewandowski to take to Sessions. The message was actually the outline of a speech that Trump wanted Sessions to give. ... ‘Our POTUS ... is being treated very unfairly. He shouldn’t have a Special Prosecutor/Counsel b/c he hasn’t done anything wrong. I was on the campaign w/ him for nine months, there were no Russians involved with him. I know it for a fact b/c I was there. He didn’t do anything wrong except he ran the greatest campaign in American history. Now a group of people want to subvert the Constitution of the United States. I am going to meet with the Special Prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the Special Prosecutor move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections so that nothing can happen in future elections.’”

Trump’s efforts to cover up the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting: “Trump repeatedly directed his communications staff not to publicly disclose information about the meeting, and he rejected a proposed public statement from Trump Jr. that acknowledged the meeting was with ‘an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign.’ ... On July 8, [Hope] Hicks said she brought to the president a draft statement about the meeting to be released by Trump Jr. Hicks told investigators that she wanted to disclose the entire story, but that Trump told her to ‘say only that Trump Jr. took a brief meeting and it was about Russian adoption.’ The president’s personal counsel later ‘repeatedly and inaccurately denied that the President played any role in drafting Trump Jr.’s statement.’”

Trump’s attempts to get a friendly attorney general to take over the investigation and investigate Hillary Clinton, and firing Jeff Sessions when he didn’t: “The President asked him [Sessions] 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. ... In July 2017, Trump asked Staff Secretary Rob Porter if Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand was ‘on the team’ and would be interested in being the AG and in charge of the Russia investigation. ... Porter ... was uncomfortable with that, understood it to mean Trump wanted someone to end the Russia investigation, and didn’t do it. ... Trump fired Sessions the day after the midterm elections, Nov. 7, 2018. ... there’s evidence the president wanted Sessions to take control of the Russia investigation and ‘supervise it in a way that would restrict its scope.’ In the summer of 2017, Trump knew that he was being personally investigated for obstruction of justice, and that the investigation included his son and son-in-law, due to the Trump Tower meeting disclosure. Trump ... often suggested an attorney general should protect the president. ‘A reasonable inference from those statements and the President’s actions is that the President believed that an unrecused Attorney General would play a protective role and could shield the President from the ongoing Russia investigation.’”

Trump ordering Don McGahn to fire Mueller, and then ordering McGahn to cover up that Trump had ordered it: “Trump’s personal counsel called the attorney for White House counsel McGahn and relayed that Trump wanted McGahn to put out a statement denying a New York Times story that Trump had asked him to fire the special counsel. ... McGahn said the story was accurate on that point, and he refused to do it. McGahn told investigators that he was summoned to the Oval Office on Feb. 6, 2018, and that the president told him the Times story ‘did not “look good” and McGahn needed to correct it.’ McGahn said Trump disputed that he told McGahn to ‘fire’ the special counsel, and that he only wanted McGahn to raise conflict of interest issues with Rosenstein and let Rosenstein decide what to do. McGahn said he told the president his recollection of his marching orders differed, that he was told, ‘Call Rod [Rosenstein]. There are conflicts. Mueller has to go.’ McGahn refused to ‘do a correction.’ ... Trump also criticized McGahn for telling investigators that the president had asked him to have the special counsel removed, and for taking notes during their meeting. ‘Lawyers don’t take notes,’ Trump told him. ... ‘Substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the Special Counsel terminated, the President acted for the purpose of influencing McGahn’s account in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the President’s conduct towards the investigation.’”

Trump bashing Michael Flynn for cooperating with the government, and supporting Paul Manafort for not cooperating: “After former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn withdrew from a joint defense agreement with Trump on Nov. 22, 2017, the president’s personal counsel told Flynn’s attorney’s the action showed ‘hostility’ toward Trump. After Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements, the press asked Trump whether he would pardon Flynn. Trump said, on Dec. 15, 2017, ‘I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens. Let’s see. I can say this: When you look at what’s gone on with the FBI and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.’ Trump repeatedly, in press interviews and on Twitter, said Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, was being treated unfairly, during his prosecution and jury deliberations. Also, in January 2018, Manafort told former deputy campaign manager Richard Gates, who had been indicted along with Manafort on multiple felony counts at that point, that the president’s personal attorney had told him they would “take care of us.” Manafort told Gates they should “sit tight” and “we’ll be taken care of,” though he said no one used the word “pardon.’ ... 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. ... there is evidence that the President’s actions had the potential to influence Manafort’s decision whether to cooperate with the government,’ and Trump’s public statements during the trial ‘had the potential to influence the trial jury.’ As for intent, the evidence ‘indicates that the President intended to encourage Manafort to not cooperate with the government.’”

Trump’s efforts to influence Michael Cohen‘s cooperation: “The report goes through Trump’s initially positive public and private messaging to Cohen following an FBI search in April 2018. During this period, the Trump Organization was paying Cohen’s legal fees, and Cohen remembers discussing a possible pardon with the president’s personal lawyer. But after reporting of Cohen’s decision to cooperate with the government in July 2018, Trump quickly shifted gears, calling Cohen a ‘rat’ and saying that Cohen’s family members might have committed crimes. ‘The evidence concerning this sequence of events could support an inference that the President used inducements in the form of positive messages in an effort to get Cohen not to cooperate ... and then turned to attacks and intimidation to deter the provision of information or undermine Cohen’s credibility once Cohen began cooperating.’ ... the special counsel repeatedly indicates that the evidence ‘could support an inference’ that Trump meant to discourage Cohen from cooperating because it would reflect negatively on the president. That is true for Cohen’s false testimony, which minimized connections between Trump and Russia, and for Trump’s attacks against Cohen’s family once he began cooperating, which the report says ‘could be viewed as an effort to retaliate against Cohen and chill further testimony adverse to the President by Cohen or others.’”