Special Counsel Robert Mueller has asked White House staffers for a moment of their time.
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has approached the White House about interviewing staffers who were aboard Air Force One when the initial misleading statement about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower was crafted, three sources familiar with the conversations said.
Now that Donald Trump Jr. has run through every excuse up to and including 'Hillary made me do it’ as his reason behind jumping at the chance to conspire with representatives of the Russian government, Mueller has become particularly interested in the first excuse—the one that Donald Trump non-Jr. cooked up while riding home from his own meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Mueller wants to know how the statement aboard Air Force One was put together, whether information was intentionally left out and who was involved, two of the sources said.
Mueller's questions could go to the issue of intent and possible efforts to conceal information during an obstruction of justice investigation. The answers to Mueller's questions also could illuminate the level of anxiety surrounding the meeting and the decision-making that followed.
It’s been clear from the beginning that the statement by the Donald Trumps was intended to confuse the true nature of the meeting and disguise the real reason why Trump’s entire senior campaign staff dropped everything to make a spot in this schedule for this get together. In his clumsy effort to have his son read an excuse that just happened to be the same as the one provided for his own unchaperoned meeting with Putin, it appears that Trump has made certain Mueller has at least one crime that doesn’t even need to be uncovered—the body is right out there on the White House lawn.
The interviews with White House staffers who were aboard Air Force One have not begun, the sources said. They currently involve only a small number of people, but the sources cautioned that number could increase. At this time, Mueller has not asked to interview President Trump. Trump Jr. was on the Hill Thursday for an interview with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Trump Jr.’s session before the Senate Judiciary Committee included a statement centered on the most brazen, jaw-dropping excuse in a set of excuses already brazen enough to address the national need for brass over the coming decade. According to Donald Trump Jr., the reason he responded to an offer to ...
- get some official documents that
- incriminate Hillary Clinton
- as part of a Russian government program to
- help Donald Trump
... with the phrase “I love it,” is because he was overwhelmed by the need to determine whether or not Hillary was fit to be president.
“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” he said.
It wasn’t about adoption, it wasn’t about doing a favor for a friend, it wasn’t about “nothing,” and it wasn’t about “opposition research.” No. Hillary Clinton made him do it.
But then, Trump Jr. might as well say he took the meeting because he’d seen pictures of Veselnitskaya and thought she was hot. Mueller doesn’t seem interested in his excuse du jour. After all, the focus of the special counsel’s attention isn’t on son. It’s on father.
Sources previously told CNN that Trump was involved in the crafting of the statement aboard Air Force One and that he involved some of his closest aides.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders -- then the deputy press secretary -- confirmed in August that Trump "weighed in as any father would" during the drafting of the statement but declined to characterize his involvement further.
Mueller considers some of the aides aboard Air Force One who helped craft the statement to be witnesses.
Mueller hasn’t yet asked to talk to either Trump, because he’s following a standard set of practices.
The former FBI director leading the probe into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia is taking a page from the playbook federal prosecutors have used for decades in criminal investigations, from white-collar fraud to mob racketeering:
Follow the money. Start small and work up. See who will “flip” and testify against higher-ups by pursuing charges such as tax evasion, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
Dear White House aides: Do you really want to take a chance that Donald Trump is going to remember you on his list of people to pardon when the time comes? He who flips first survives this thing without getting to hold up a signboard bearing an inmate identification number.