The story of the Mueller investigation is in great measure a story of prosecutorial restraint. The truth, however, is precisely the opposite. The working assumption of these inquiries appears to be that Trump was wronged by overzealous pursuers. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has also convened hearings on the investigation’s origins.
William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, has directed John Durham, the US attorney in Connecticut, to conduct a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading to the investigation, to determine whether FBI officials or anyone else engaged in misconduct at the outset.
Over the past several months, the President has mobilized his administration and its supporters to prove that the FBI’s investigation was flawed, or worse, from its inception. More recently, though, the suspicions have generally run the other way. As Mueller later learned, and included in his report, Trump seriously contemplated firing the special counsel on several occasions – so the initial suspicions at the FBI, about the President’s real intentions, were well-grounded. Mueller’s team ultimately took possession of Comey’s memos, and they proved to be important evidence in the report Mueller filed two years later. Rosenstein gave Mueller a broad mandate – to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as any matters that arose from his investigation. Mueller III, the director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013, to serve as special counsel. On May 17, eight days after Trump fired Comey, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, announced that he had appointed Robert S. This was to make sure that in the event Trump directed an end to these inquiries, the documents could always be preserved, located, and shared. Once McCabe became director, Bureau employees grew so concerned that Trump would try to shut down the investigation that they secreted at least three copies of key documents, including Comey’s memos, in remote locations around the Bureau. Indeed, FBI officials even went a step farther. Mueller raised possibility Trump lied to him, newly unsealed report reveals (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Alex Wong/Getty Images Mueller testified earlier in the day before the House Judiciary Committee in back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill. WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 24: Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller arrives for testimony before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building Jin Washington, DC. With Comey’s memos in the system, the investigators were certain to have access to them – even if McCabe himself would eventually be gone. McCabe knew that once documents were inside the system, they were virtually impossible to remove. Most important, he told the investigating agents to place Comey’s memos in SENTINEL, the FBI’s case management software. Given the wild pace of events, McCabe couldn’t be sure how long he’d last as director, so he wanted to lock down as much evidence as possible. McCabe thought Trump’s behavior was sufficiently problematic to be investigated for possible obstruction of justice, and he told his team to open a criminal case. The initial decision fell to Andrew McCabe, who was Comey’s deputy and now the acting director of the FBI. Now, suddenly, Comey was out – and the question arose of what to do with his memos about his conversations with the President. Comey’s conversations with Trump had been so distressing that the director started writing up contemporaneous summaries of their interactions and sharing them with a handful of top officials at the Bureau. In response to these concerns, the FBI took extraordinary – and previously undisclosed – steps to protect its investigations.įrom Comey’s first meetings with Trump, shortly after he won the presidency, the FBI director developed misgivings about his new boss’ behavior – about Trump’s demands for “loyalty,” and even more unnerving, his request that the Bureau drop its investigation of Flynn. Would Trump dismiss more people? Would he shut down the investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia? Would the President demand that the Bureau cease its investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s onetime national security adviser?
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