United States Law

"Director Mueller, the President has repeatedly claimed that your report found there was no obstruction and that it completely and totally exonerated him, but that is not what your report said, is it?"

"Although department policy barred you from indicting the President for this conduct, you made clear that he is not exonerated. Any other person who acted in this way would have been charged with crimes, and in this nation, not even the President is above the law. Which brings me to this committee's work. Responsibility, integrity and accountability: These are the marks by which we who serve on this committee will be measured as well. Director Mueller, we have a responsibility to address the evidence that you have uncovered. You recognized as much when you said, quote, "The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrong doing"... That process begins with the work of this committee. We will follow your example... We will act with integrity. We will follow the facts where they lead. We will consider all appropriate remedies. ...We will do this work because there must be accountability for the conduct described in your report, especially as it relates to the President."

"Two years ago you returned to public service to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. ...Over the course of your investigation you obtained criminal indictments against 37 people and entities. You secured the conviction of President Trump's campaign chairman, his deputy campaign manager, his national security advisor and his personal lawyer, among others. In the Paul Manafort case alone you recovered as much as $42 million, so that the cost of your investigation to the taxpayers approaches zero. ...In Volume 1, you find that the Russian government attacked our 2016 elections... "in a sweeping and systematic fashion," and that the attacks were designed to benefit the Trump campaign. Volume 2 walks us through 10 separate incidents of possible obstruction of justice, where... "President Trump attempted to exert undue influence over your investigation." The President's behavior included... "public attacks on the investigation, nonpublic efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate"... Among the most shocking... President Trump ordered his White House counsel to have you fired, and then to lie and deny that it had happened, he ordered his former campaign manager to convince the recused attorney general to step in and limit your work, and he attempted to prevent witnesses from cooperating with your investigation."

"I'll be joined today by Deputy Special Counsel . Mr. Zebley... served as my chief of staff. Mr. Zebley was responsible for the day-to-day oversight on the investigations conducted by our office. ...I also want to... say thank you to the attorneys, the FBI agents, the analysts and professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent matter. These individuals... were of the highest integrity."

"It is unusual for a prosecutor to testify about a criminal investigation, and given my role as a prosecutor, there are reasons why my testimony... will necessarily be limited. First) public testimony could affect several ongoing matters. In some of these matters, court rules or judicial orders limit the disclosure of information to protect... the fairness of the proceedings, and consistent with longstanding Justice Department policy, it would be inappropriate for me to comment in any way that could affect an ongoing matter. Second) the Justice Department has asserted privileges, concerning investigative information and decisions, ongoing matters within the Justice Department, and deliberations within our office. These are Justice Department privileges that I will respect. The department has released the letter discussing the restrictions of my testimony. I, therefore, will not be able to answer questions about certain areas that I know are of public interest. For example, I am unable to address questions about the initial opening of the FBI's Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment; or matters related to the so-called Steele dossier. These matters are subject of ongoing review by the department. Any questions on these topics should, therefore, be directed to the FBI or the Justice Department. ...[O]ur report contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made. We conducted an extensive investigation over two years. In writing the report, we stated the results of our investigation with precision. We scrutinized every word. I do not intend to summarize or describe the results of our work in a different way in the course of my testimony today. ...[T]he report is my testimony, and I will stay within that text. ...I will not comment on the actions of the attorney general or of Congress. I was appointed as a prosecutor, and I intend... to adhere to that role and to the department's standards that govern it."

"Certain of the charges we brought remain pending today. And for those matters... the indictments contain allegations, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. In addition to the criminal charges... as required... we submitted a confidential report to the attorney general... The report set forth the results of our work and the reasons for our charging and declination decisions. The attorney general later made the report largely public. ...I made a few limited remarks... about our report when we closed the special counsel's office in May... [C]ertain points... bear emphasis. First) our investigation found that the Russian government interfered in our election in sweeping and systematic fashion. Second) the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its election interference activities. We did not address , which is not a legal term; rather, we focused on whether the evidence was sufficient to charge any member of the campaign with taking part in a criminal conspiracy, and it was not. Third) our investigation of efforts to obstruct the investigation and lie to investigators was of critical importance. Obstruction of justice strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and to hold wrongdoers accountable. Finally) as described in Volume 2 of our report, we investigated a series of actions, by the President, towards the investigation. Based on Justice Department policy and principles of fairness, we decided we would not make a decision as to whether the President committed a crime. ...it remains our decision today."

"The order appointing me as special counsel directed our office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. It also included investigating efforts to interfere with or obstruct our investigation. Throughout the investigation I continually stressed two things to the team... First) we needed to do our work as thoroughly as possible and expeditiously as possible. ...Second) the investigation needed to be conducted fairly and with absolute integrity. Our team would not leak, or take other actions that could compromise the integrity... All decisions were made based on the facts and the law. ...[W]e charged more than 30 defendants with committing federal crimes, including 12 officers of the Russian military. Seven defendants have been convicted or pled guilty."

"[W]hen Boris Yeltsin... was under the gun for corruption, he made Vladimir Putin the director of the FSB, which is really the ... Putin started blackmailing people that were investigating Yeltsin for corruption, and suddenly the word compromat, or compromising blackmailable material came into the lexicon... [H]e started with the equivalent of the Attorney General of Russia. He had a video of him with two prostitutes, and he played it on national television... [which] ended all corruption investigations into... Yeltsin. Boris Yeltsin was so happy, he made him the... Deputy Prime Minister of Russia... [T]hen Yeltsin stepped down and Vladimir Putin became the president of Russia and then he turned it into a... capitalist dictatorship which Benito Mussolini used to call Fascism, a corporate dictatorship of the ultra-right. That is where Russia is today, but if you read the Mueller Report, especially section 1, you will find..."

"I hope and expect this to be the only time that I speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself. No one has told me whether I can or should testify, or speak further about this matter. There has been discussion about, and appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully and the work speaks for itself, and the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress. In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office. So beyond what I have said here today, and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress..."

"At one point in time I requested that certain portions of the report be released . The Attorney General preferred to make the entire report public all at once, and we appreciate that the Attorney General made the report largely public. ...I certainly do not question the Attorney General's good faith in that decision."

"So that was Justice Department policy. Those were the principles under which we operated, and from them we concluded that we would not reach a determination, one way or the other, about whether the president committed a crime. That is the office's final position, and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president."

"And beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge."

"First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting president, because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents [are] available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now. And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing."

"It [our report] explains that under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited. The special counsel's office is part of the Department of Justice and by regulation, it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider. The department's written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report and I will describe two of them for you."

"The order appointing me [as] special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. ...[A]s set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the volume two of our report explains that decision."

"The report has two parts addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign's response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president."

"The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood, and that is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office. That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation, or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable."

"These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."

"[T]he grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election."

"As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization Wikileaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate."

"I'll make a few remarks about the results of our work, but... it is important the the office's written work speak for itself."

"[T]he FBI... exists, among other things, to investigate federal crime, threats to the national security, and to collect foreign intelligence. ...That's what we're focused on. [W]ith respect to Russia in this context, our job is to detect, deter, disrupt, and defeat their operations. Lawfully... [A]s we are focused on Russia, we have groups of people that constantly... their job is to focus on nothing but Russia. As we're staring at the Russian problem, to the extent that other people, third country nationals, or Americans, or anybody else comes across our radar screen, and has a connection to the Russians in some way that looks nefarious to us, and falls within the scope of the Attorney General guidelines that authorize us to conduct investigations... If that comes across the radar screen, then we... investigate that, and run it down wherever it goes. ...[A]nd we'll deal with other Russian threats simultaneously. You're constantly staring at that problem, and to the extent that any Americans cross... our radar screen, then we will investigate that."

"This is a conversation that you and I have been having for months and months now. ...You said to me, it was about Russia. The investigation was always about Russia. [W]hen you said that, what I really take to be your meaning is that it wasn't really an investigation of the Trump folks at all. The focus of the investigation was of Russian intelligence activity."

"It would've been... a dereliction of our duty not to investigate this information. ...[W]e'd been focused on the Russians as threat actors for a long, long time. Given what was going on with respect to e-mail dumps and hacking and the connection with those to the Russians in that summer and then, this thing drops. I think it would've been malpractice, a dereliction of duty... It would've been highly, highly inappropriate for us not to pursue it, and pursue it aggressively."

"[T]he case was about Russia. ...Period. Full stop. That was the focus of the investigation. So, when the Papadopoulos information comes across our radar screen, it's coming across in the sense that we were always looking at Russia. ...The FBI predates the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation and so we've been thinking about Russia as a threat actor... for decades... So, this information comes in against that backdrop... This information, the Papadopoulos information, is what triggered us going down this path."

"[P]rosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk."

"[T]hese are not matters of close professional judgment. ...to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience."

"The Special Counsel’s report establishes that the President tried to influence the decisions of both Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort with regard to cooperating with investigators. Some of this... was done in plain sight via tweets and public statements; other such behavior was done via private messages..."

"Despite being advised by... that he could face legal jeopardy for doing so, Trump directed McGahn on multiple occasions to fire Mueller or to gin up false conflicts of interest as a pretext for getting rid of the Special Counsel. ...Trump made "repeated efforts to have McGahn deny the story" — going so far as to tell McGahn to write a letter “for our files” falsely denying that Trump had directed Mueller’s termination."

"The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include: · The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort; · The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and · The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign."

"[T]he conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice."

"As you know, the Virginia State Bar and D.C. Bar Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 3.3 "Candor Toward the Tribunal" prevents a lawyer from making "a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal." Furthermore, Rule 8.4(c) states that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to "engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation which reflects adversely on the lawyer's fitness to practice law.""

"We agree with Robert Mueller when he says that this behavior "threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel.""

"[A] letter dated March 27, 2019 from Special Counsel Mueller to Attorney General Barr... requested that the Attorney General, rather than summarize... immediately release executive summaries crafted by Mueller's team. Second, he wrote that Barr's summary sent to Congress "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of the Office's work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25...""

"While it would be despicable enough if the Attorney General had thus mischaracterized the report, we now have evidence he appears to have lied to Congress twice about the extent of his knowledge of the Special Counsel's reaction to Barr's mischaracterization... "No, I don't," Barr said, when asked by Rep. ... whether he knew what was behind the reports that members of Mueller's team were frustrated by the attorney general's summary... "I don't know," he said the next day, when asked by Sen. ... whether Mueller supported his finding that there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that President Trump had obstructed justice."

"In a letter to Congress on March 24th, 2019 characterizing the Special Counsel's report, Mr. Barr stated: "In cataloguing the President's actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgement, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent..." ...In reality we know that Special Counsel Mueller found "substantial evidence" of criminal intent and nexus to a specific proceeding as it relates to at least four, if not more, obstructive acts taken by the President of the United States. We know he directed aides to fabricate internal documents, lie about their actions, attempted to fire the Special Counsel, get then-Attorney General Sessions to "un-recuse" himself so as to exert greater control over the investigation's direction, and likely tamper with witnesses."

"As Members of Congress and former prosecutors, we believe that respect for the law and duty to honor the truth are of utmost importance. Given the recent release of a document written by Special Counsel Mueller to the Attorney General objecting to his severe mischaracterization of the Special Counsel's report, it appears the the Attorney General has at best misled Congress and the American people, and at worst perjured himself before the Senate and House. As such, we formally request an ethics investigation by the Virginia State Bar and the District of Columbia Bar into Mr. Barr's conduct for review and possible disbarment."

"I was recently called... a conspiracy theorist. ...A conspiracy theorist is someone who works in no facts, or takes those facts and molds them. ...Well, I have one reference now to all of my books [holds up the Mueller Report]... I've got 440 pages of reference. By the way, my last book Plot to Destroy Democracy [had] 600 references, because in my world... I have to show my work. I don't make these things up. What you saw with your own eyes exists. Just because Bill Barr jumped up and said "No collusion! No obstruction!" there's this report here, and it says... They found that there were 77... instances of lying [to the FBI] where they did not want to talk about what would most likely have shown . Good example, . They said for all of the two months that he was working, back and forth, with a guy who was suspected of being an asset of [the Russian government], and a mysterious woman [Olga Polonskaya] who was claimed to be Vladimir Putin's niece... trying to arrange a summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, trying to get dirt on Hillary Clinton back to Donald Trump, they concluded there was no collusion or conspiracy because they could not identify if he had turned or briefed anyone on the campaign. ...The problem is, it also says in the next sentence that people destroyed evidence, people lied to the Special Counsel, and information could not be found because people were deliberately obstructing them. ...[T]here's a sentence here [in the Mueller Report]... page one or two... because so many people lied, destroyed information, put things on encrypted apps, and then deleted them, that this information could not be validated or verified. ...Now in my crazy world, where there's a little gap in information ...I will make the little leap, and if you say he went through all this effort for months... to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and didn't tell anybody. How many of you believe that? Why would multiple... "dirty tricks teams", there were identified six separate dirty tricks teams: , the Trump Tower and Michael Cohen trying to do a peace plan for the Ukraine that would essentially give half of the Ukraine to Russia, trying to lift sanctions, each one of these teams was looking for dirt on Hillary Clinton, and it all had a nexus in Russia, and it's all in [the Mueller Report] this book."

"This was a multi-year effort, before we ever get into when they started flooding the zone with humans. ...Kislyak, the diplomat, to give prime cover to all of these people. He would be first point of contact, He would go and they would meet people like Michael Flynn, bring them to Russia, give him a speech where he earns... $50,000. Sit him next to Vladimir Putin, former Director of Defense Intelligence Agency. Jill Stein is on the other end of that table. ...All of this occurred in 2015. Donald Trump hadn't even announce that he was running for president. is going into full steam. Every aspect of the American experience with this election, on one side of the ledger, had the word "Russia" attached to it."

"I was expecting ... to come busting through the door... and start arresting some people. ...When Al Capone ordered the ... he was in Florida. ...There was a garage full of dead bodies in Chicago. ...But he was seen. He had witnesses. None of the evidence tied it to him... but he ordered the... Massacre. ...But Al Capone would be convicted and sent to prison on tax evasion... [T]hat is how justice works. This report, for some people, was supposed to be the end-all, be-all... They [Russians] did flood the zone of this nation... [T]hey started a strategic framework around this election... [T]he report says 2015, and that the started in 2014. We have evidence from other hearings that showed [it] hired its top managers two months before the pageant in 2014. ...This operation ... most likely started right after the election of Barack Obama for his second term. ... ...wrote a Facebook post about it where he said that night he and Donald Trump were DMing [Direct Messaging] each other and Trump said we should be marching on Washington. How could we allow this guy... to win and beat Mitt Romney. ...Rykov said to him... Donald, if you want to run for president, I will support you. Donald Trump DM'd him giving the double thumbs-up. One week later he registered Make America Great Again PAC. That's November of 2012. So the Internet Research Agency starts up 10 months later. Two months after that the pageant happens, and we know is being discussed in there. ...Trump is already talking about giving Vladimir Putin a 50 million dollar bribe in the form of a penthouse on top of it. Then Russia invades Crimea in the spring of 2014. Donald Trump will not criticize him but criticizes Barack Obama. Then in 2014 the Mueller Report identifies the Internet Research Agency starts full-scale operations. The election's not even for two years. This is called strategic framing. ...We've also seen that they started... co-opting the National Rifle Association in 2010, by sending and to the United States... Then Evangelicals in 2010. Russia had a strategic plan and this report spells out, in horrific detail, how they moved from strategic framing, used the Internet Research Agency to do... meta-narrative framing... where you build an information bubble around your opponents. ...[T]he information bubble they started with in ...2014 was "Russia good, Hillary bad, Donald Trump good." That's it. ...In this report they said Facebook had 740 accounts that put out over 80,000 posts that reached 126 million Americans. Twitter had some insane number like 7,000 accounts that put out 1.5 million tweets that all framed those three things, "Russia good, Hillary bad, Donald Trump... president of the United States.""

"[T]he investigation itself seemed to have... pulled a lot of punches. There were things in here [Meller Report] that... I have some of the greatest legal scholars in the United States sit in the green room with me and go, "How is this not what it is?"... [C]ollusion is a term that the president has chosen... but what... most of this report will tell you in great detail is that there was a massive, ginormous, multi-year Russian intelligence operation to break the American system of democracy and to choose a president of the United States."

"Why... that long... discussion about Vladimir Putin, baby spy? Because this section [Volume I] catalogues all of the Russian contacts with the people in the Trump campaign, but more importantly, it shows that Russia... in order to benefit one person, starting as far back as 2013 (in my books it's earlier)... flooded the zone with every type of intelligence activity imaginable. It's all here [in the Mueller Report]. ...[S]omebody joked on Twitter [that] they should call this the Malcolm Report because I... read it all in Plot to Hack America and Plot to Destroy Democracy. No, there's more stuff in here. First... we all know about the hackings. The hackings were the easy part. ...All intelligence is information warfare. ...I drop a cruise missile on top of you because you don't know that I know that every Thursday at 7 o'clock... you go out and smoke a shisha at a certain bar... We kill people with intelligence. ...But in the world, which this report involves, that's what we call... spy hunting... I was ridiculed... It's all a conspiracy theory, but I said this on national television... This investigation started because we had suspicions that American citizens were working with a foreign intelligence agency and may have been trying to affect the fundamental system of our democracy, elections."

"Section [Volume] I is 448 pages of conspiracy and collusion, but it did not meet the legal standard that the Special Counsel established for criminal conspiracy. Everyone else in this room will have gone to prison... but for the purposes of this investigation, they built in their own parameters."

"On page 2 it says, "There is no legal term called . Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the ... We address the factual question of whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated. Like collusion, coordination does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We applied the term coordination in the sense that... That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were 'informed by' or 'responsive to' other actions or interests." So the next time you rob a bank, don't discuss it. Have one guy open the door, and you come in with a gun and you just stand there, and when everybody hands the money to the other guy and you all walk out the door... You did not collude, you did not coordinate, and you did not conspire because... I will read it again, "That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to other actions or interests.""

"[I]f you haven't looked at it [Mueller Report] you really should. I'm definitely going to make it must reading for at least one, if not both of the courses that I teach here. ...Integrity, ability and veracity, when you speak about Mueller, is not at issue here. This report is a product of an incredibly talented team of investigators that did an incredible amount of work. ...Volume I talks about the Russia investigation... It documents over 100 pages of contacts between individuals associated with the [Trump] campaign and people on the Russian side. Volume II then looks at obstruction... if there's not obstruction in Volume II, I don't know what it is."

"Trump’s complicity in the Russian hacking operation and his campaign’s contacts with the Russians present a more complicated picture. ...If there wasn’t collusion on the hacking, it sure wasn’t for lack of trying. ...[T]he Mueller report makes clear that Trump personally ordered an attempt to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails; and people associated with the campaign pursued this believing they were dealing with Russian hackers. Trump... engaged in discussions about coordinating public-relations strategy around WikiLeaks releases of hacked emails. At least one person associated with the campaign was in touch directly with... ... Russian military intelligence. ...Donald Trump Jr. was directly in touch with WikiLeaks—from whom he obtained a password to a hacked database. ...[T]he picture it all paints of the president’s conduct is anything but exonerating. Call it Keystone Kollusion."

"The president also committed impeachable offenses. ...The president... seven days after taking office, demanded loyalty from his FBI director. Shortly thereafter, he isolated Comey in order to ask that he drop a sensitive FBI investigation in which Trump had a personal interest. The president then leaned on Comey to make public statements about his own status in the investigation. And when he couldn’t get Comey to do so, he recruited the deputy attorney general to create a pretext for Comey’s removal. ...[T]here simply is no plausible way to understand this fact pattern as a good-faith exercise of presidential power. It describes a frank abuse of power... this was impeachable conduct at the time. The Mueller report reinforces that belief. ...Ditto the effort to get Sessions to investigate Hillary Clinton. ...Even as he was trying to get Sessions to protect him from the FBI, Trump was also trying to induce Sessions to investigate his political opponents. This is... the initiation of injustice. ...molten-core impeachment territory. ...trying to induce the attorney general ...to initiate a criminal investigation based on no known criminal predicate against a private citizen whom he happened to dislike. ...The president hinted that Manafort should not “flip” and that he would take care of him—and Manafort acted in a fashion consistent with his relying on those assurances. ...[T]his activity ...is criminal. It is also a grotesque abuse of power for impeachment purposes. ...[R]epeatedly urging witnesses not to cooperate with federal law enforcement and entertaining the notion of using his Article II powers to relieve them of criminal jeopardy or consequences ...This is ...the sort of conduct the impeachment clauses were written to address."

"[T]he report leaves me with little doubt that the president engaged in criminal obstruction of justice on a number of occasions."

"Mueller reports that after the news broke that Trump had sought to get then–White House Counsel to fire the special counsel, Trump sought to get McGahn to deny the story. He also sought to get him to create an internal record denying the story. ...It is hard to imagine a plausible defense based on the idea that pressuring an employee to create false government records by way of influencing his ability to tell the truth is within the president’s constitutional authority."

"The President committed crimes. ...Mueller does not accuse the president of crimes. ...But the facts he recounts describe criminal behavior. ...[T]hey describe obstructive activity that does not involve facially valid exercises of presidential power... Lewandowski was not a government employee, so this was not... exercising his powers to manage the executive branch. ...He tried to get a private citizen to lobby the attorney general on his behalf for substantive outcomes to an investigation... [T]he step he asked Lewandowski to press Sessions to take was... unethical. ...Limiting the jurisdiction of the special counsel to future elections would have ...precluded the indictments Mueller later issued for Russia’s hacking and social-media operations. It would have precluded the prosecutions of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Mike Flynn, , and ... [I]t is unlawful obstruction of justice. Full stop."