Robert Mueller source Evan Vucci/AP

Special counsel Robert Mueller has requested documents from the DOJ related to the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The documents could help Mueller determine whether President Donald Trump tried to obstruct justice when he fired Comey in May.

Comey was leading the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s election interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow during the election.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked the Justice Department to hand over thousands of documents related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey, including any communications between the White House and the DOJ around the time that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the probe into Russia’s election interference.

ABC News reported late Sunday that the document request came amid Mueller’s continuing examination of whether Trump sought to obstruct justice when he fired Comey, who was leading the FBI investigation into potential collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia.

The request for emails between the White House and the DOJ related to Sessions’ recusal could help Mueller determine why Trump has projected anger that Sessions relinquished control over the campaign-related investigations to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in March. The recusal came after it was revealed that Sessions had at least two meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the US during the campaign and failed to disclose them.

“Earlier reports indicated that Trump exploded when he found out about his recusal,” said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “That could be evidence of his state of mind because it is a highly unusual reaction to a recusal decision.”

Trump told The New York Times in July that “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should’ve told me before he took the job so I could choose someone else.”

About a week later, he called Sessions “beleaguered” and asked why the Justice Department and Congress weren’t investigating “Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations.” Trump took aim at Sessions again the next day, tweeting that he had taken “a VERY weak position” on Hillary Clinton’s “crimes” and on “leaks” from the intelligence community.

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Mueller is amping up his obstruction investigation

Hope Hicks source Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Mueller has been investigating whether Trump obstructed justice since at least June. He has interviewed some of Trump’s closest aides as part of that inquiry, including communications director Hope Hicks and former press secretary Sean Spicer.

According to White House special counsel Ty Cobb, Trump decided he wanted Comey gone shortly after he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3. Comey reiterated during that public appearance that some of Trump’s associates were still under investigation, and he said it made him “mildly nauseous” to think that his handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe “might have had some impact on the election.”

Reports have suggested that Trump was annoyed with Comey for implying that the election was somehow swayed by the director’s controversial decision to tell Congress that he was reexamining Clinton’s emails 11 days before the election. Additionally, Comey had not allowed the White House to review his testimony, which Trump and his aides considered “an act of insubordination,” according to Reuters. The Times echoed that report, saying Trump was broadly irked by his inability to gain assurances of loyalty from Comey.

As such, Trump wrote a letter with one of his top policy advisers, Stephen Miller, outlining why he thought Comey was unfit to lead the FBI and expressing frustration with the fact that Comey would not confirm publicly that he was not under investigation. The letter was sent over to the DOJ after some heavy editing by White House counsel Don McGahn, according to the New York Times. Sessions and Rosenstein met with Trump shortly thereafter and wrote memos arguing that Comey should be fired.

“The sequence of events in which Sessions and Rosenstein met with Trump and the next day transmitted Rosenstein’s memo to the White House shortly before Trump fired Comey, allegedly for the reasons stated in Rosenstein’s memo, places Sessions and Rosenstein at the core of the obstruction inquiry,” said William Yeomans, a former deputy assistant attorney general who spent 26 years at the Justice Department.

“It will be important to know what communications occurred within DOJ and between DOJ and the WH before the White House meeting, immediately after the WH meeting, after transmission of the memo and before Comey’s firing, and after Comey’s firing,” Yeomans added. “Hanging over this whole episode are questions of the propriety of Sessions’ participation, given his recusal from the Russia investigation and Trump’s later statements that he was thinking of Russia when he fired Comey.”

‘Letting Flynn go’

The day after Comey’s dismissal, Trump told two Russian diplomats in an Oval Office meeting that by firing Comey, whom he reportedly called a “nut job,” he had taken “great pressure” off himself, according to The New York Times. Days later, he told NBC’s Lester Holt that “the Russia thing” had been on his mind when he dismissed the FBI director.

Those comments – combined with a one-on-one meeting in February in which, Comey testified, Trump sought to have the FBI consider dropping its investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn – have led lawmakers, legal experts, and now Mueller to examine whether Trump sought to obstruct justice, a criminal and impeachable offense.

Also of interest to Mueller, according to The Washington Post, are requests Trump made to Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers in late March. Trump reportedly asked Coats on March 22, with CIA Director Mike Pompeo still in the room, whether there was a way to get Comey to back off the FBI’s Flynn investigation.

Soon afterward, The Post said, Trump called Rogers and Coats asking whether they could make public statements denying that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the campaign. Mueller interviewed Coats and Rogers about those interactions in mid-June.

Comey testified in June that back in February, a day after former national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his communications with Russia’s ambassador to the US, Trump asked everyone to leave the room before he expressed “hope” that the FBI could see a way clear to “letting Flynn go.”

Comey said he found Trump’s emptying of the room before he made the request “significant” and took the comment itself as a “direction.”

Comey also testified that Trump asked him to publicly announce that Trump was not personally under investigation and that Trump asked for loyalty during a dinner in late January. Comey told Congress that Trump seemed to be implying that he would fire him if he did not pledge loyalty but that Comey ultimately promised the president “honesty” instead.

Obstruction of justice is broadly defined: It involves any conduct in which a person willfully interferes with the administration of justice. To charge someone with obstructing justice, however, prosecutors have to prove that “the defendant corruptly endeavored to influence, obstruct, or impede” an investigation, according to legal and national security experts at the website Lawfare. That element, they said, “is the hardest to prove, because it depends on showing an improper motive.”