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Mueller rejects argument that Trump is shielded from obstruction laws

The special counsel categorically rejected arguments advanced by Trump’s lawyers that the president is shielded from obstruction-of-justice laws by his constitutional role and powers.

“The Constitution does not categorically and permanently immunize the president,” the Mueller report said in a dense section of legal analysis that suggested that investigators found abundant evidence that Trump had in fact repeatedly sought to undermine the probe.

The report even describes a “significant change in the president’s conduct” after firing FBI Director James B. Comey, facing the formation of the special counsel and realizing that investigators were focusing on whether his behavior amounted to obstruction.

The report makes clear that investigators saw ample evidence of both action and intent — noting, for example, that Trump instructed White House lawyer Donald McGahn to have the special counsel removed at the same time he was telling Sessions to limit the scope of the probe to campaign interference by Russia.

The “temporal connection . . . suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose,” the report said.

The 25-page section dispenses with a series of arguments that Trump defenders have raised for months for presidential immunity, saying it doesn’t matter whether there was any underlying crime or whether Trump’s conduct — dangling pardons, attacking investigators — was in plain view for the public.

Nor was Mueller’s team swayed by the argument that Trump ultimately allowed investigators to finish their work, noting that his efforts to undermine the probe failed “largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” Comey, for example, did not stop investigating Flynn.

The section and its seeming certainty about the obstruction evidence and that Trump was not immune add to the mystery of why Mueller ultimately opted not to render judgment on the matter. The team appears to have decided that the Justice Department opinion that a sitting president can’t be indicted meant that the report should leave the issue of whether to pursue an obstruction charge to Congress.

The section concludes with an endorsement of the adage that “no person is above the law” and that “while the report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

(From Volume 2, Pages 156-181)

— Greg Miller

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