That is what Noah Feldman of Bloomberg argues in Comey Opens Door to Investigate Trump Dossier, which has a subtitle of “It's not clear the special counsel had authority to investigate the president personally. He does now.”
For background on Feldman, his bio on that page notes that he
is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
Thus one may want to pay close attention to his legal analysis.
He begins by writing
Hiding in plain sight in former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee is a potentially major new avenue for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia-related crimes: the possibility that President Donald Trump committed a federal crime by lying to Comey about his connections to Russia and activities on his 2013 visit there.
The key on this is the phone call where Trump, unsolicited, calls Comey and says that he had nothing to do with hookers — remember the allegation in the Steel dossier.
Feldman follows what I just quoted are these two brief paragraphs:
It’s a crime to lie to a representative of the federal government. Thus, Mueller can now investigate the possibility of a criminal charge against Trump if he had any connection to Russia.
And Trump’s denial, as reported by Comey, will also enable Mueller to do what the Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently has not done: investigate the questionable dossier claims that Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence on the basis of sexual escapades in Moscow.
Given that Mueller already had the memoranda created by Comey after his contacts with Trump, if Feldman’s anaysis is correct, that expansion of the investigation has likely already happened, and then if there is any “there” there, it provides a possible explanation for Trump telling the Russians that he had been under pressure from the Russian investigation that he thought he had relieved by firing Comey.
Feldman notes
Under Section 1001, there doesn’t have to be an open investigation to make the lying into a crime. So it wouldn’t matter that Comey had already told Trump that there was no investigation.
He also notes Comey’s testimony seems to imply that the FBI had NOT been investigating that allegation in the Steele dossier — remember, the President was NOT personally being investigated by the FBI. And following on that, Feldman writes that
without the statements that Comey attributes to Trump, it’s entirely possible that Mueller would not have considered himself to have the jurisdiction to investigate Trump’s activities in Russia.
Feldman argues that while clearly Mueller was investigating Russian attempts to influence the election, it was not clear that his authority would have extended to that aspect of the Steele dossier, but Trump’s statement to Comey raises the possibility of a false statement to a federal law enforcement official, which legitimizes expanding the the investigation.
We already know that Trump’s tweets have led him into problems already. Is it possible that he has again done himself great harm?
Two more brief snips from Feldman:
Good, sound investigative practice would now quite reasonably focus on whether Trump’s statements were false. That’s because false statements to Comey in this context would count as a crime.
Yes they would. After all, Flynn was in great legal jeopardy because he lied to the FBI about his phone calls to the Russian Ambassador
.
And then there is these final words in the article:
So don’t be misled by the suggestion that there is little new in Comey’s prepared testimony relative to the previously existing leaks. The outline was already known, but not the details.
And details matter, especially in criminal investigations like the one Mueller is now conducting.