Activity within Donald Trump’s legal team has reached a high boil, as Trump considers every possible way to interfere with the investigation into his connections with Russia.
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Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.
If pardoning everyone in sight isn’t enough, Trump is also preparing to kneecap Special Counsel Robert Mueller, building up reasons to support firing Mueller or ordering him to restrict the investigation.
With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers.
All of this comes in the wake of Trump drawing a ‘red line’ around his personal finances, and Robert Mueller making it clear he intends to step over that line. Whatever Trump is planning to do, it hasn’t gone down well even within his own legal team. Team spokesman Mark Carallo has left and Trump is pushing aside his longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who will no longer be heading the Sabotage Squad.
And while Trump giving himself an advance pardon may seem ridiculous, it may not be impossible.
The two-pronged approach gives Trump a set of cascading options. If Mueller seems to be staying away from Trump’s finances, he can pardon anyone who falls under the former FBI director’s gaze. If Mueller starts to move into areas that Trump doesn’t like, he can either order the Justice Department to rein in Mueller, or use his collection of supposed conflicts as an excuse to dump the special counsel.
A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job.
As Mueller’s investigation has pulled in more experts on money laundering and financial crime, Trump’s temperature has been rising sharply. One particular area has really seemed to generate flames.
Mr. Mueller’s team has begun examining financial records, and has requested documents from the Internal Revenue Service related to Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, according to a senior American official. The records are from a criminal tax investigation that had been opened long before Mr. Trump’s campaign began. Mr. Manafort was never charged in that case.
Federal investigators have also contacted Deutsche Bank about Mr. Trump’s accounts, and the bank is expecting to provide information to Mr. Mueller.
Of particular concern to Trump seems to be the the idea that Mueller could go after his own taxes. Trump may not have released those taxes to the public, but Mueller could request them from the IRS without going through Trump, and could look at records going back for years.
Mueller is clearly investigating whether Trump, Manafort, and other members of the campaign have long standing relationships that could have given the Russian government leverage over them in the election. But that kind of investigation is exactly what Trump wants to stop.
Sekulow cited Bloomberg News reports that Mueller is scrutinizing some of Trump’s business dealings, including with a Russian oligarch who purchased a Palm Beach mansion from Trump for $95 million in 2008.
“They’re talking about real estate transactions in Palm Beach several years ago,” Sekulow said. “In our view, this is far outside the scope of a legitimate investigation.”
In that deal, Donald Trump cleared a more than $50 million profit in less than a year while doing essentially nothing. It may not be directly tied to hacking DNC computers, but it’s just one of many connections showing how Donald Trump was almost entirely funded out of Russia.
Departed spokesperson Carallo warned Trump repeatedly against making his war on the special counsel public. Trump’s Twitter account has been all but silent over the last few days, with only a few staff-prepared tweets. But Trump’s unhinged New York Times interview along with Trump’s call to prepare ways to wreck the investigation may have been the final straw for Carallo.
As for that blanket, all inclusive pardon, it’s a more open question than it may seem.
Currently, the discussions of pardoning authority by Trump’s legal team are purely theoretical, according to two people familiar with the ongoing conversations. But if Trump pardoned himself in the face of the ongoing Mueller investigation, it would set off a legal and political firestorm, first around the question of whether a president can use the constitutional pardon power in that way.
Trump has attacked long time supporter Jefferson Sessions. He’s gone after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller. And he’s stacking up evidence to use in dismissing Mueller.
Before Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, he created a false excuse for that action. Apparently Trump thinks that worked so well, he might as well do it again.