Told of special counsel appointment, he cursed and said, ‘This is the end of my presidency,’ according to Mueller report
Mueller said he could not prove criminal intent but there was extensive evidence that Trump’s campaign officials interacted with the Russian effort to throw the election and that Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation into collusion.
The AP reports that “Trump directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to call the acting attorney general and say that Mueller must be ousted because he had conflicts of interest. McGahn refused — deciding he would rather resign than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate fame.
“Recognizing that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily, we considered whether to issue a subpoena for his testimony.” The report said the special counsel’s office had “weighed the costs” of a potentially long legal battle to obtain an interview with Trump versus the value of completing the investigation sooner. The office concluded that the “substantial quality of information we had obtained from other sources” would allow it to draw the conclusions it sought “on intent and credibility.”atergate firings fame. ”
For all of that, Mueller said in his report that he could not conclusively determine that Trump had committed criminal obstruction of justice because criminal obstruction would require proving criminal intent.
More from the AP:
Mueller evaluated 10 episodes for possible obstruction of justice, including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the president’s directive to subordinates to have Mueller fired and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate.
The president’s lawyers have said Trump’s conduct fell within his constitutional powers, but Mueller’s team deemed the episodes deserving of criminal scrutiny. Mueller reported that Trump had been agitated at the special counsel probe from its earliest days, reacting to Mueller’s appointment by saying it was the “end of his presidency.”
As for the question of whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, Mueller wrote, “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.”
Mueller also said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge any campaign officials with working as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia.
John Kennedy spoke to Robert Kennedy during the Cuban missile crises, and told him that Kennedy could have been impeached and removed over the crises.
The report is not that which some in Congress wanted. The independent Counsel did not, and cannot substitute for that which is a sole power of congress. Nor can a special counsel provide the fig leaf some in Congress wanted. So forty million was spent, and some lawyers in the Washington DC area are happy and much richer. Some ordinary political corruption was uncovered, and if Hilliary Clinton had been elected at this point much the same would have already taken place with some kind of special prosecutor, and ordinary corruption of some of her folks would have been acted upon that has thus far lain quietly in the grass. The only question is whether a Republican house have impeached her in the first two years, and would the Republicans retained the House in 2018 to face the dilemmas the Democratic House with the American public thinking would you all just please shut the hell up, and stop wasting money on these asinine investigations that you hope will lead to political justification for the mystical circle jerk of an actual impeachment, and removal of a sitting President, and successful coup, possible resulting in America’s first Dictator. Once again proving Aristotle right that Democracy fails by handing power to a tyrant.