The incident provoked press coverage that raised questions about the timing of the call, given the upcoming Trump Jr. interview. In response to the media scrutiny, the White House insisted the call had nothing to do with the Judiciary Committee’s upcoming interview of Trump Jr.

AD

AD

But a legal expert tells me this afternoon that the call does raise concerns, particularly in light of Trump’s past behavior toward investigators. This expert also points to another important piece of context here: Grassley’s recent complaints that he could not get the White House to respond to him about policy matters.

To understand the significance of this episode, I talked to Andy Wright, a founding editor of the Just Security legal blog and a former congressional investigator and legal counsel in the Obama White House. He stressed to me that it’s possible there’s an innocent explanation — that Trump is just now being responsive to Grassley’s efforts to communicate with him on policy issues.

But, Wright says, “with his son facing down a showdown with the committee and all of a sudden he’s answering Chuck Grassley’s mail,” the “subtext is, as president, I have ability to withhold things you need as deliverables for your district.”

AD

AD

Wright emphasized that senators “need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.” By this, he means that although Grassley is performing an investigative role, he needs to be able to also carry out his other functions on unrelated policy and legislative issues. But, Wright added, in a “normal White House,” a discussion about a subject such as ethanol policy would have involved White House and congressional staff with expertise in agriculture and energy, not a two-minute phone call directly between the president and a senator. It would not be carried out unilaterally by “the person who’s under investigation potentially” and who also has control over the regulatory policy in question, Wright said, referring to reports that the president’s own conduct is being examined for possible obstruction of justice.

Trump’s call to Grassley, then, “removes any sort of institutional efforts to safeguard the investigative interests of the committee,” said Wright.

Wright compared Trump’s call to Grassley to former FBI director James B. Comey’s description of his dinner with the president, during which Comey said Trump demanded loyalty. The Grassley call, said Wright, “is less the direct ask,” but “it’s more the atmospherics of intimidation that seem to be the parallel here.”

AD

AD

It’s worth remembering, too, that the multi-faceted Russia investigation has been intensifying in recent weeks, with Trump Jr.’s impending Judiciary Committee interview just one piece of the ever-expanding probe. Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian-born lobbyist and intelligence operative who was present at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Trump, Jr., provided testimony to the grand jury convened by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. This is concrete evidence that Mueller is scrutinizing the meeting at which Trump Jr. said he would “love” to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, in the full knowledge that this dirt would be coming from the Russian government.

Also recall that, although Donald Trump himself was not at the meeting, he played a direct role in trying to spin coverage of it. Last month, he personally dictated a misleading statement in response to the revelations that the meeting had taken place, claiming that the participants “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” Mueller’s team is “keenly focused” on Trump’s role in preparing that statement, NBC reported this week, and congressional investigators no doubt will be examining it as well.

What’s more, according to the Wall Street Journal, investigators are also ramping up their scrutiny of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was also at the Trump Tower meeting, and whose ties to Russian oligarchs are more extensive than previously known. NBC reports this afternoon that notes Manafort took at that meeting included the word “donations” near “a reference to the Republican National Committee.”

AD

AD

NBC’s report noted that this reference was “cryptic,” meaning that it’s hard to say how significant it is, if at all. But NBC also reported that this “elevated the significance of the June 2016 meeting for congressional investigators, who are focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.”

That comes after last night’s report in Politico that Mueller is now collaborating with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, sharing evidence and speaking frequently — a move intended to foreclose the possibility that Trump might try to absolve officials targeted by the Russia investigation through the presidential pardon power. Because that power does not extend to crimes prosecuted under state law, Trump wouldn’t be able to use it in that context.